LONDON (MCT) — In a meeting symbolizing the end of years of enmity between British rule and Northern Ireland republicans, Queen Elizabeth II shook hands Wednesday with a former Irish Republican Army (IRA) commander.

Martin McGuinness, now a deputy first minister of Northern Ireland and a member of the pro-republican Sinn Fein party, was a senior IRA member in the years of sectarian violence. During that time, the group was responsible for blowing up the yacht of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the queen’s cousin, killing him and three others while they vacationed off the coast of Northern Ireland in 1979.