John Creaney

John Alexander Creaney, QC, TA, OBE, DL (born 29 July 1933 – died 3 June 2008) was a Northern Ireland QC, later named Senior Prosecuting Counsel at Belfast Crown Court, beginning in 1978.

Creaney was born in Armagh City, County Armagh to a World War II veteran fatherwho worked as a bus driver. Creaney attended the Royal School, Armagh and Queen's University, Belfast (QUB). He followed in his father's footsteps by joining the Territorial Army's Officer Training Corps (OTC). Creaney helped raise the RIR 5th Battalion for NATO service, keeping the soldiers for the most part out of The Troubles, although Creaney himself was intimidated from his home in South Belfast due to threats from both republican and loyalist paramilitaries, beginning in the 1970s.

Creaney was a pupil of Basil Kelly and began his legal career in 1957, after being called to the Bar. In 1968, he was appointed Junior Crown Counsel for County Antrim, and was named a QC five years later, taking silk in 1973.

Creaney oversaw or worked on numerous notable trials/prosecutions, including the following:

• 1966: Malvern Street killings
• 1991: Danny Morrison (Irish republican)
• 1992: Brian Nelson (Northern Irish loyalist)
• 2005: Abbas Boutrab case, Northern Ireland's first al-Qa'eda-related trial

He later served as a Deputy Lieutenant of County Down.

In 1957, he married Evelyn McCormack; the couple had three daughters. Creaney died at his home in Cultra in 2008, aged 74, from leukaemia.