Brendan Hughes (June 1948 – 16 February 2008) was a leading Irish republican and former Officer Commanding (OC) of the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). His reputation with the republican cause would lead to nicknames like The Dark, and Darkie. He was the leader of the 1980 Irish hunger strike.

Hughes was born in June 1948 into an Irish Nationalist Catholic family from the Lower Falls area of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He joined the British Merchant Navy in the late 1960s, believing it would reduce the income burden on his father. He became involved in the republican movement after the 1969 riots, believing he would be protecting his community from loyalist mobs.

He was a cousin of Charles Hughes, who was the O/C of D Company in the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade during the Falls Curfew, and who was shot and killed in March 1971 by the Official Irish Republican Army's Belfast Brigade during a feud between the Provisional and Official IRAs.

Hughes joined the Irish Republican Army in 1969, sided with the Provisional faction in the split of 1969–70, and was "on the run" in Belfast by 1970. From 1970 to 1972 Hughes was involved in a number of attacks on British soldiers and bank robberies to raise funds for the republican movement. Hughes was key to the IRA's early activity in Belfast against the British Army, especially in and around the Falls Road area of Belfast, sometimes carrying out along with his unit as many as five operations a day against either the British Army or the RUC.

Hughes described his normal day during that period as "you would have had a call house [a safe meeting place] and you might have robbed a bank in the morning, done a float [gone out in a car looking for a British soldier] in the afternoon, stuck a bomb and a booby trap out after that, and then maybe had a gun battle or two later that night."

After the IRA-British truce of 1972 broke down in July, Hughes was an IRA commander during the Battle of Lenadoon, which quickly spread to other parts of Belfast. A number of civilians, British soldiers, and both Republican and Loyalist volunteers were injured or killed.

As Officer Commanding (OC) of the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade, he was the main organiser of Bloody Friday, the biggest bombing attack ever carried out by the organisation in Belfast. On 21 July 1972, the IRA exploded 22 bombs all over the city, leaving nine people dead, including two British soldiers, an Ulster Defence Association (UDA) member, two teenage boys, and a mother of seven; 130 people were injured. Hughes regarded the operation as a disaster, as he explained in an interview set up by Boston College:

I was the operational commander of the "Bloody Friday" operation. I remember when the bombs started to go off, I was in Leeson Street, and I thought, "There's too much here". I sort of knew there were going to be casualties, either [because] the Brits could not handle so many bombs or they would allow some to go off because it suited them to have casualties. I feel a bit guilty about it because, as I say, there was no intention to kill anyone that day. I have a fair deal of regret that 'Bloody Friday' took place ... a great deal of regret ... If I could do it over again I wouldn't do it.