Maze Prison escaper Brendan "Bik" McFarlane has lost his High Court bid to stop his trial for the 1983 kidnapping of supermarket boss Don Tidey.
Mr McFarlane had secured leave to bring a legal challenge to the at the High Court last month on grounds of "systemic" delays in bringing the prosecution.
Counsel for the former senior IRA figure had argued that his first challenge to the prosecution was in 1999 but was only delivered last March. This compromised his right to a fair trial, it was contended.
The delay was not due to any fault of his own, Mr Hugh Hartnett SC, for Mr McFarlane, contended.
But Mr Justice Quirke ruled that blame for the delay could not be attached to courts nor the prosecutors and that Mr McFarlane would not be denied his Constitutional right to a fair trial.
Mr McFarlane (52) was charged in January 1998 with falsely imprisoning Mr Don Tidey in 1983 and with possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life at Derrada Wood, Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, in November and December 1983.
Mr McFarlane had been in prison at the Maze since 1975 for his part in the IRA bombing of a bar on the Shankill Road in which five people were killed. He was the leader of the Provisional IRA prisoners at the Maze prison and escaped in the mass breakout by 38 prisoners from the jail in September, 1983.
He was later arrested in Amsterdam in January 1986, extradited to Northern Ireland and released on parole from the Maze in 1997.
He was arrested by gardaí outside Dundalk in January 1998 and secured bail later, pending the outcome of the various legal challenges to his prosecution.
Mr Tidey was kidnapped by an IRA gang in 1983 and rescued after 23 days in captivity. A trainee garda, Gary Sheehan, and a member of the Defence Forces, Pte Patrick Kelly, were killed in a shoot out with the kidnap gang when Mr Tidey was rescued.
Sinn Féin justice spokesman Aengus Ó Snodaigh today condemned the decision. "During earlier hearings into this case the gardai had to admit to losing all of the alleged evidence against Brendan McFarlane. That should have been the end of the matter.
"However in a vindictive move the DPP sought to go down the road of a trial," he said.