Operation Flavius was the name of an operation by a Special Air Service team in Gibraltar on 6 March 1988. Three members of the Provisional IRA members had planned a terrorist attack during the changing of the guard at the governor’s residence. For other Special Air Services, see Australian Special Air Service Regiment and Special Air Service of New Zealand. ... March 6 is the 65th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (66th in Leap years). ... 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) is a leap year starting on a Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) is a paramilitary group which aimed, through the use of violence, to achieve three goals: (i) British withdrawal from Ireland, (ii) the political unification of Ireland through the merger of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland , and (iii) the creation of an all...

Their plan was to hide a bomb in a car so as to kill a large number of British soldiers and civilians. The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. ...

The SAS team was told (incorrectly) that the PIRA had already placed their bomb and were ready to detonate it. As the suspects walked along the causeway into Gibraltar from the Spanish frontier, the SAS quickly shot the three (Dan McCann, Seán Savage and Mairéad Farrell) dead, claiming later that the bombers were "reaching for" a detonator. In fact all three were unarmed and the bomb was still in nearby Spain.

An inquest was called, which found that all three had been shot while laying face down on the ground. An army bomb expert also disputed whether a remote controlled explosive device was technologically feasible, casting further doubt on the justification given. The car bomb found days later in Marbella was a conventional timer controlled device. Marbella is a city in Andalusia, Spain, by the Mediterranean, situated in between Malaga and Gibraltar, beneath the Sierra Blanca. ...

The following year ITV broadcast a Thames Television documentary "Death on the Rock", reflecting concerns about the shootings, which led to a significant amount of criticism of the British government. However, British tabloids attacked the character and credibility of the witnesses, such that their statements in the documentary became discredited in the United Kingdom. Independent Television (ITV) is the name given to the original network of British commercial television broadcasters, set up to provide competition to the BBC. In England and Wales the channel was recently rebranded ITV1 by ITV plc who own the regional broadcasting licences for the regions. ... The classic Thames Television logo (1969 - 1989), featuring a geographically incorrect montage of London landmarks. ... Death on the Rock was a controversial and BAFTA award winning episode of Thames Televisions current affairs strand This Week. ... The United Kingdom is a unitary state and a democratic constitutional monarchy. ... Newspaper sizes in August 2005. ...

In 1995 the European Court of Justice ruled that the British government had sanctioned excess force and breached the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is formally known as the Court of Justice of the European Communities, i. ... The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, also known as the European Convention on Human Rights, was adopted under the auspices of the Council of Europe in 1950 to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms. ...