government frame criminals all the time. and juries convict the framed criminals all the time too. Original Article Blair apologizes to 11 in IRA blasts Leader exonerates people wrongfully jailed in '74 deaths Ed Johnson Associated Press Feb. 10, 2005 12:00 AM LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized Wednesday to 11 people wrongfully jailed for IRA bombings three decades ago, a case regarded as one of Britain's worst miscarriages of justice that was dramatized in the film In the Name of the Father. Members of the Conlon and Maguire families were jailed for 1974 Irish Republican Army bombings in Guildford and Woolwich in England that killed seven people and injured more than 100. The 11 people convicted in the attacks were subsequently acquitted. "I am very sorry that they were subject to such an ordeal and such an injustice," said Blair, who was lobbied by his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, to apologize on behalf of the British government. "That's why I am making this apology today. They deserve to be completely and publicly exonerated." The arrests and convictions of Gerry Conlon, his father, Giuseppe, and nine others achieved global notoriety when the case was dramatized in the 1993 movie, which earned seven Oscar nominations. Gerry Conlon, who was portrayed by actor Daniel Day-Lewis, welcomed Blair's apology, which was delivered in a televised address. "Everyone has been affected by this, everyone has suffered trauma from it. And the good thing is that he has acknowledged it, and he accepts that we are in pain," Conlon said. Giuseppe Conlon died in prison in 1980. He was portrayed in the movie by Pete Postlethwaite. Blair made his gesture at a time of deadlock in Northern Ireland's long-running peace process and with pressure mounting on Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party, over the outlawed group's reported robbery of $50 million from a Belfast bank, the biggest cash theft in history. Four of the wrongfully accused - Gerry Conlon, Paddy Armstrong, Paul Hill and Carole Richardson, who became known as the Guildford Four - were sentenced to life imprisonment for the Oct. 5, 1974, bombing at the Horse and Groom pub in Guildford that killed five people. Gerry Conlon says police beat him during interrogation and coerced him to implicate seven others as bombmakers, including his father; his aunt, Anne Maguire; four members of her family; and a friend. The Guildford Four were acquitted on appeal in 1989 after authorities concluded their confessions to police had been fabricated and forensic evidence favorable to their defense suppressed. The other seven were exonerated in 1991, long after they had served their sentences.