Michael Campbell (38)
Photo: REUTERS

Lithuanian prosecutors last Friday asked for 16-year prison sentence for an Irish citizen accused of trying to buy weapons for the Irish terrorist group.

Michael Campbell (38) was arrested in January 2008 in an international sting operation, and is accused of trying to buy guns and explosives for the Real IRA from undercover agents.

While the proposed sentence was revealed on Friday, Campbell's legal team will only present his final defence at hearings in the middle of September.

Lithuania's overloaded courts usually postpone hearings until the autumn because of their summer recess.

In the last hearing in May, Campbell told the court in the Lithuanian capital that he was set up by British intelligence and denied he plotted to boost the arsenal of the Real Irish Republican Army, led by his elder brother.

His trial opened in August 2009. Open hearings have been rare due to a blackout when Lithuanian and British intelligence witnesses testified.
Campbell's family ties are crucial to the prosecution case because his brother Liam, 47, is one of the four leaders of the Real IRA found liable by a civil court for a 1998 bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland, which killed 29 people.

The Real IRA broke with the Provisional IRA - once the main armed group opposed to British rule in Northern Ireland - in 1997 over the latter's support for a peace deal with London.