LAWYERS for Ms Roisin McAliskey are expected to ask a High Court judge to grant her conditional bail later this week. They will apply for her to be allowed to leave a London hospital with her infant daughter, Loinnir, instead of being transferred back to Holloway Prison.
Ms McAliskey's mother, Bernadette, the former Mid-Ulster MP and civil rights campaigner, said she doubted that her daughter, who is awaiting extradition to Germany in connection with an IRA bombing, would be able to use the facilities at the mother-and-baby unit in Holloway prison because a number of prisoners had made threats against her.
"She was theoretically allowed access before she was moved to the hospital, but that did not become a reality for a number of reasons. There have been a number of threats made within the prison against her own safety and as a Category A prisoner it is difficult to share facilities with non-Category A prisoners. Two special security officers follow her everywhere," she explained.
Mrs McAliskey said her daughter's lawyers would ask that Roisin and her baby should be bailed to a nursing home in north London, would offer to pay £100,000 in court and could offer "substantial" sureties from a number of British MPs and members of the House of Lords.
"There is not one single, supportable or justifiable reason to argue that she would abscond ... All the alleged facts against Roisin have eroded," Ms McAliskey said. "There is a strong case for her to be granted bail again. If Roisin McAliskey went to Southern Ireland, she would be immediately arrested, tried and convicted of the offence so long as the Germans provided the evidence," she added.
Ms McAliskey (25), from Coalisland, Co Tyrone, was arrested last November in connection with the IRA bombing of a British army barracks in Osnabruck. A High Court judge granted her bail last Friday on condition that she stayed in a guarded room at the Whittington hospital, Archway, north London. She gave birth to her daughter on Monday afternoon after a 10-hour labour.
"Both Roisin and Loinnir [lrish for ray of sunlight] are doing very, very well, so it will only be a matter of days before the hospital says they are medically able to leave. A decision as to where to move her will have to be made before then," said Mrs McAliskey.
After paying tribute to the "unintrusive" police presence at the hospital, Mrs McAliskey referred to media claims that the security bill for guarding her daughter and grandchild was £50,000.
"Had she been granted bail it would have cost nothing," she said.