Gardai will face legal difficulties with any application to extradite double murderer John Gallagher to Ireland from Britain, following his detention yesterday by British police. Gallagher, who absconded from the Central Mental Hospital in Dublin last weekend, was arrested by police in a car park in Oxford, England, yesterday evening.
Oxford police said they arrested him after receiving information from the Irish Government and the British National Crime Squad. They confirmed that he was undergoing psychiatric assessment, following his detention under the Mental Health Act.
Legal sources said last night that because Gallagher was found guilty but insane at his murder trial in Dublin, a verdict which has no precise equivalent in English law, he may be regarded in England as not having been convicted of the offence.
However other sources suggested that an outstanding High Court order, instructing that Gallagher be held at the "pleasure of the Minister for Justice", provided grounds for his extradition.
A spokesman for the Department of Justice last night said it was a matter for law officers from both jurisdictions. He said the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, had stressed that Gallagher's escape should not be made into a "political football".
Extradition applications are made by the gardai but the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney General can be involved. Any challenge to an order is made through the courts.
Gardai were in immediate contact with CID officers in Oxford after learning of Gallagher's detention. Oxford police said they believed there was no existing warrant for his arrest and that, as a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, he could not be deported. Under British law, Gallagher would have been convicted and served his sentence in a secure mental hospital.
Following any change in the psychiatric assessment of his condition he would have remained a prisoner and, in the present context, an escapee. However a UK police source said the apparent effect of Irish law meant that he would be treated in Britain as having no previous convictions.
Gallagher was found guilty but insane when he shot and killed Anne Gillespie (18) and her mother Annie (51) in the grounds of Sligo General Hospital in 1988. He had been held in the Dundrum hospital for more than 11 years.
Mr Charles Smith, clinical director of the Central Mental Hospital, yesterday advised Gallagher to return to Dundrum "where he will be treated with every sympathy".