ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, October 5, 1996              TAG: 9610070070
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-2  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND
                                             TYPE: NEWS OBIT 

SINN FEIN FIGURE PAT MCGEOWN FOUND DEAD AT 40

Pat McGeown, who barely survived a 42-day hunger strike as an Irish Republican Army prisoner in 1981 and later became a leader of the IRA-allied Sinn Fein party, has died. He was 40.

Friends, worried that they hadn't seen McGeown for several days, found his body Tuesday after breaking down the door of his home.

The cause of death was not announced, but McGeown had suffered from chronic heart problems that his family attributed to the hunger strike.

McGeown joined the IRA's Fianna youth wing in the late 1960s. He was imprisoned without trial for IRA activities in 1971, then released in 1975. He was convicted in 1976 of bombing Belfast's Europa Hotel, then caught trying to escape.

- Associated Press

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