Brian Murphy, Irish protester tackled by Kevin Vickers, says he holds no grudge

An Irish republican protester manhandled by Canada's ambassador at a commemoration event in a Dublin cemetery Thursday says he holds no ill will.

Kevin Vickers, the former House of Commons sergeant-at-arms, tackled protester Brian Murphy during a centenary ceremony to remember British soldiers killed in the 1916 Easter Rising, which claimed 485 lives, including more than 100 British forces.

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The intervention sparked immediate comparisons on social media to Vickers' heroic actions in thwarting a gunman on Parliament Hill two years ago. But the protester in Dublin says he was no threat.

"Maybe he had a different perception of what was happening or what my intentions were," Murphy, 46, told The Canadian Press in a telephone interview.

'Outnumbered 200 to 1'

Murphy said the attention the international incident has garnered is raising the issue of Irish republicanism and what he sees as injustice toward two imprisoned men.

"Put it this way, it wasn't my intention [but]the way things played out, you know, things are grand," said the manager of a youth and community centre in Dublin, who now faces a charge of breach of public order he says he'll fight in court.

"The Irish police was straight there on top of me and sort of walked me away. I certainly wasn't going to be offering any resistance to anybody there. I was basically outnumbered 200 to one.

"I was making a point and I knew what the outcome would be that I'd be taken away."

The republican advocacy group of which Murphy is a member took a far harder line, however, demanding a Canadian government apology and calling for the "immediate removal" of Vickers as Canada's ambassador to Ireland.

"His position does not extend him to involve himself in Irish internal affairs," the Irish Republican Prisoner Welfare Association said in a statement.

"Not only did Mr. Vickers interfere with the right of an Irish citizen to peacefully protest in his own country he undermined the role of the Irish state and the Garda (police) authority to deal with such protests."