In 1942, during the wartime state of emergency declared by Irish Taoiseach Eamonn De Valera, Behan was arrested by the Garda Síochána and put on trial for conspiracy to murder and the attempted murder of two Garda Detectives, which the IRA had planned for during a Dublin commemoration ceremony for Theobald Wolfe Tone. Behan was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment. He was first incarcerated in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin and then interned both with other IRA men and with Allied and German airmen at the Curragh Camp in County Kildare. Those experiences were related in Behan's memoir "Confessions of an Irish Rebel". Released under a general amnesty for IRA prisoners and internees in 1946, Behan's IRA career was largely over by the age of 23. Aside from a short prison sentence in 1947 for trying to break an imprisoned IRA man out of an English prison in Manchester, Behan effectively left the organisation but remained friends with Cathal Goulding.