Taxi-driver jailed for IRA tip-off

A TAXI-DRIVER was yesterday jailed for 12 years for supplying information on a paratrooper murdered by the IRA as he visited his fiancee to make final preparations for their wedding.

Private Anthony Harrison, 21, of the Third Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, was shot five times in the back as he sat in the lounge of his fiancee's home in east Belfast in June 1991.

Noel Thompson, 34, of Belfast, who admitted conspiring to murder Pte Harrison, was also given concurrent sentences of six years for giving information on other soldiers and the location of a judge's home.

Thompson picked up Pte Harrison at Belfast airport on his return from England and reported it to a former schoolfriend called 'Paul', whom he believed to be an IRA man, the court was told.