David Trimble, former Prime Minister of Northern Ireland honored with a Nobel Peace Prize for having worked for reconciliation between Protestants and Catholics in the British province, died Monday July 25 at the age of 77, announced the unionist party of Ulster. “It is with great sadness that the family of Lord Trimble announce that he passed away earlier today after a short illness”the party said in a statement.
This Protestant jurist who entered politics in the early 1970s in the ranks of the unionist Vanguard party, close to the paramilitaries, helped shape, a quarter of a century later, the Good Friday Peace Agreement with the late Catholic John Hume, joint Nobel laureate.
“Crucial and courageous role”
David Trimble led the first power-sharing government resulting from this agreement which ended three decades of bloody clashes between Republicans, mainly Catholics and supporters of the reunification of Ireland, and Unionists, mainly Protestants and defenders of the maintenance of the province in the British Crown.
Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said “deeply saddened” by this disappearance. He praised on Twitter the “crucial and courageous role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland” played by the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
