McAliskey Extradition Refused

The daughter of former Westminster MP, Bernadette (Devlin) McAliskey will not be extradited to Germany to face terrorist charges.

A Belfast court has turned down an application for the extradition of Roisin McAliskey to Germany.

The authorities in Germany wanted McAliskey to face trial for the attempted murder of soldiers at a British army barracks in Osnabruck in northern Germany in 1996.

Ms McAliskey was then arrested at her home in Coalisland last May – but was on bail since then.

Today, the Recorder of Belfast, Judge Burgess, refused the application on the basis that it "would be oppressive because of the passage of time".

Judge Burgess determined that Ms McAliskey believed the threat of extradition was behind her from the time in 1998 when the home secretary announced in the House of Commons that he was refusing to extradite her on medical grounds.

The judge said this was confirmed in Ms McAliskey's mind by a statement made in the House of Commons in 2000 by the Attorney General that there were no grounds for instituting proceedings against her in the UK.

Ms McAliskey's lawyers had argued that to extradite her would "be an abuse of process as the previous application failed".

They said it would be unjust and oppressive to grant extradition in the case of a "fragile woman with this appalling history of post traumatic stress disorder".

This was in reference to evidence given by her mother - former nationalist MP Bernadette Devlin - of the mental trauma Ms McAliskey still suffers as a result of an attempted assassination by loyalists in the family home in 1981 when she was aged nine.

The public prosecutor in Germany alleged Ms McAliskey was a member of a Provisional IRA active service unit which fired three mortar grenades at Quebec Barracks in Osnabruck in 1996.

No one was killed or injured but substantial damage was caused to the base.

(BMcC)