Eddie Copeland

Eddie Copeland is a prominent Irish republican from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Copeland joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army after the fatal shooting of his father by the British Army. John Copeland died on 31 October 1971, two days after being shot near his home in Strathroy Park in Ardoyne. John Copeland was not known to be affiliated with any paramilitary group.

Copeland himself has been the target of loyalist paramilitaries. In December 1996 he was seriously injured in a Ulster Defence Association car bomb attack at his home. The bomb had been made by Frankie Curry, who had been a leading figure in the Red Hand Commandos before becoming an independent dissident.Henry McDonald & Jim Cusack, UDA – Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror, Dublin: Penguin Ireland, 2004, pp. 287-288

On 8 February 1995, Andrew Clarke (27), a private in the British Army, was sentenced at Belfast Crown Court to ten years' imprisonment for the attempted murder of Copeland when he opened fire on mourners outside the home of deceased IRA Volunteer Thomas Begley in Belfast in October 1993. On...
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