The length of a jail term being served by Dublin-born criminal George Mitchell in the Netherlands has been reduced by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal.
Yesterday, judges ruled that the 2 1/2 -year sentence imposed by a lower court on Mitchell on a robbery charge last year be reduced to two years.
A defence plea to have the lesser offence of embezzlement substituted for the robbery charge was rejected.
Under Dutch law, prison sentences run concurrently from the date of arrest and one-third is remitted for good behaviour. Mitchell is expected to be freed within months.
The court president, Mr Jules Wortel, said they rejected defence claims that Mitchell had been innocent of involvement in a robbery but may have been involved with others in an attempt at embezzlement. The court was satisfied he was guilty of robbing an Irish lorry laden with computer parts, he added. Together with the Irish lorry driver and two Dutch nationals he was tried and convicted of a £5 million computer parts robbery from the lorry en route from the Hewlett Packard plant in Co Kildare to a Dutch customer.
Mitchell (49), nicknamed "The Penguin", was described by Garda sources as being among the top five criminals in Ireland after he left the country and moved to Holland in 1996.
During his trial and subsequent appeal he claimed gardai had involved an agent provocateur to try to trap him. Dutch undercover police, who had been tipped off by their Irish counterparts, moved in and arrested the gang as the lorry was being stripped of its load near Schiphol Airport in March 1998.
In a second Dutch Court of Appeal ruling an Irishman convicted of shooting dead a Dutch criminal has had his 15-year sentence reduced to 12 years.
Judges at Hertogenbosch Court of Appeal ruled that Dublin-born Derek Dalton (31), with an address in Birmingham, should now serve 12 years.
The former barman, together with a Dutch national, was found guilty last December of killing a Dutch drug-trafficker and crime boss in "a settling of old criminal scores".