PETER McMullen successfully fought extradition from the United States for 18 years, despite publicly admitting his part in paramilitary activities.
The former paratrooper non political asylum from a San Francisco court because of his claim that his crimes were political.
During his years in the US, McMullen (49), a former regiment cook, openly talked of his part in the Ripon bombing and the IRA attack two years earlier at the Palace Barracks in Belfast in which 11 people died.
McMullen - who became known as "Peter the Para" - deserted the Paratroop regiment in 1971, two years after he was posted to Northern Ireland, where he met his wife, Ms Eileen Loughran, who came from a republican family.
McMullen was born in Magherafelt, Co Derry, but raised on military bases in England, where his father served in the RAF. He was a Catholic and had become uneasy about the British government's policy of internment. Three days before Bloody Sunday, he deserted from Palace Barracks.
He was recruited to the Provisional IRA in Dublin and worked on intelligence before being sent to Britain. He rented a flat in Bootle with another man and hired a Ford Escort to carry out the bombing on Claro Barracks. He quit the IRA in September, 1974.
Shortly afterwards he was jailed for more than three years for firearms offences by Dublin's Central Criminal Court.
But McMullen claimed that after his release he was pressed back into service and, after doing intelligence work, was ordered to arrange the kidnapping of a wealthy New York Irish bar owner. He said that because of his refusal to carry out the operation; he was sentenced to death by an IRA court.
McMullen finally gave up his fight against extradition in March this year and was flown back to Britain.