Only one republican prisoner will remain in Britain when the repatriation of five republican prisoners to Portlaoise is completed.
Yesterday the Home Office accepted the requests for repatriation and once the Irish warrants are processed and operational details are completed the five prisoners will be flown to Ireland to continue their sentences. The Prison Service refused to confirm that the men would be repatriated before Christmas but sources close to one of the prisoners said he had been informed that the transfers would take place next Monday or Tuesday.
The announcement came the day after the defeat in the House of Commons of a Tory motion calling for an end to the early release of paramilitary prisoners until there was decommissioning. Two of the men who will be repatriated are Patrick Kelly (32), from Co Longford, and James Murphy (27), from Co Limerick. They were convicted in 1996 of conspiracy to cause explosions and sentenced to 20 years and 17 years respectively after a raid on a house in London during which an IRA member, Mr Diarmuid O'Neill, was shot dead by police.
The three other men are: Michael Gallagher, from Glasgow, who was sentenced to 20 years for his connection with the IRA cell which carried out a mortar bomb attack on Heathrow Airport in 1994; Jan Taylor (55), who was sentenced to 30 years for planting a bomb outside Harrods in 1993, and John Kinsella (54), from Dublin, who is serving a 16-year sentence in connection with the IRA bomb attack on Warrington gasworks in 1993. He has protested his innocence and the IRA has denied that he is a member.
The remaining republican prisoner in an English prison is Nick Mullen (44), who was sentenced to 30 years in 1990 for conspiracy to cause explosions. An appeal against his sentence is due to be heard in January.