WORLD : IRA Convictions Overturned

LONDON —  An appeals court today threw out the convictions of four people blamed in a 1975 Irish Republican Army terrorist bombing after the government said investigators may have faked evidence.

Relatives and others in the gallery of Old Bailey court cheered as Lord Lane, the chief justice, announced that the convictions had been reversed. The court also reversed the convictions of two of the four in a second bombing.

“I’ve been in prison for 15 years for something I didn’t do,” Gerard Conlon, 35, shouted to a cheering crowd outside the court as he walked free.

In addition to Conlon, the defendants included Carole Richardson, 32; Patrick Armstrong, 39, and Paul Hill, 35. They were sentenced to life in prison for killing five people in an explosion at a pub in Guildford, southwest of London, on Oct. 5, 1974.