Paul "Dingus" Magee, who was arrested in Co Kerry earlier this month, was given leave by the High Court yesterday to challenge an 11-year-old district court order for his extradition to Northern Ireland. Magee (51), formerly of Belfast and with an address at Shanakill, Mona Valley, Tralee, also secured leave to seek an order restraining his delivery to the Northern authorities.
Mr Justice O'Neill directed that the judicial review proceedings be consolidated with earlier proceedings in which Magee is challenging the legality of his detention. Magee was granted bail on March 9th after securing leave to take the latter challenge under Article 40 of the Constitution.
Magee was convicted and sentenced to two life sentences in June 1981 for the murder of SAS Captain Herbert Westmacott and for the attempted murder of British soldiers in May 1980. He escaped from custody in October 1989 but was apprehended within two days, and extradition to the North was ordered by the district court.
In his application for leave to seek judicial review yesterday, Mr Richard Humphreys, for Magee, said that since the district court orders were made, Magee had been taken into custody by the UK police who were fully aware of his identity. After serving six years in prison in the UK he was transferred to prison in the Republic.
Since his transfer, Magee had been granted temporary release and had been living openly, it was argued. No effort was made by the Garda to enforce the extradition orders and the Garda also must be deemed to have abandoned that project, counsel said.
Magee had been on temporary release from Portlaoise prison since last December. He had been transferred to Portlaoise jail in 1998 from a British prison under the Transfer of Sentenced Persons Convention.
By failing to disclose to the court or to Magee at the transfer stage that there was a prospect of further rendition, the UK authorities could not now exercise that option, Mr Humphreys said. He argued there was no reasonable cause for the failure to execute the district court warrants between May 5th, 1998, and March 8th, 2000, and that there had been such fundamental changes of circumstances since a Supreme Court order in 1991 directing Magee's extradition that it would be unjust to permit it.
In an affidavit, Magee said he was arrested on the morning of March 8th as he collected his unemployment assistance cheque at Tralee post office.
He had been given to understand that the authorities in this State regarded him as a "qualifying prisoner" for the purposes of the early release scheme, and he was expecting to be released in or about May. That was the reason, he understood, for his securing extended temporary release.