A court on Friday convicted a London man of conspiracy in an IRA bombing campaign in Britain and sentenced him to 30 years in prison. Nicholas Mullen was charged in connection with one of the biggest caches of terrorist equipment ever found in Britain. The stockpile of arms and explosives was discovered in London in 1988. Justice Anthony Hidden, said Mullen, 42, was ``a very dangerous man.'' ``You combine a high degree of criminal cunning with a commitment to a particular cause. That cause deals not with arguments but with atrocities,'' Hidden said. The Old Bailey Central Criminal Court jury deliberated 12 hours before finding Mullen guilty of conspiracy to cause bombings for his part in the Irish Republican Army's 1988 bombing campaign. Eamon Wadley, 36, also on trial for terrorist offenses, was cleared of all charges. Police accidentally discovered the arms and explosives stockpile in south London in December 1988 after a man was shot in the stomach in a disturbance on the street in front of an apartment complex. The gunman ran into the complex, and a search of the area found an apartment filled with terrorist equipment, including nearly 200 pounds of Czechoslovak-made Semtex explosive, an unspecified number of machine guns and other firearms, rifles, handguns, and bomb-making equipment. During the six-week trial the jury heard how Mullen helped the IRA by renting apartments, buying used cars and obtaining false identities for the guerillas. However, the Old Bailey jury found Wadley innocent of aiding terrorists, and he was acquitted of four charges of making property available for use in connection with terrorism. Prosecutor John Nutting called the south London apartment ``one of biggest caches of terrorist equipment ever found in this country.'' The prosecutor said that if the plot had not been unexpectedly foiled, the IRA's campaign would ``certainly have led to the death or injury of many people.'' The IRA is waging a bloody fight to drive the British out of the predominantly Protestant province of Northern Ireland and unite it with the Roman Catholic Irish Republic.
