Supporters of Mr Danny McNamee were furious last night that the appeal against his conviction for conspiracy to cause explosions in connection with the 1982 Hyde Park bombing had been delayed until Monday.
The appeal was to start at the Court of Appeal in London today, but was postponed at the last minute when the Crown Prosecution Service delivered previously undisclosed evidence to his lawyers yesterday. A spokesman for the Danny McNamee Campaign said it was "almost beyond belief" that the CPS had "seemingly . . . withheld relevant case material until this late stage".
Mr McNamee (38), released on licence from the Maze prison last week after serving 12 years of a 25-year sentence, has always protested his innocence. He is supported by a high-profile team of solicitors and MPs, including Ms Gareth Peirce and Labour MPs Mr Kevin McNamara and Mr Jeremy Corbyn.
Earlier, at a press conference in London, Judge Andrew Somers, a retired US municipal judge who was a state prosecutor with the Attorney General's Office in Wisconsin, told reporters he had been "very uneasy" during Mr McNamee's original trial.
Setting out the three grounds for the appeal, Mr McNamara claimed the prosecution at the trial knew the identity of the "IRA bomb-maker" who had constructed the devices Mr McNamee was accused of making, but they "deliberately concealed that evidence from the defence".
The second ground for appeal was that the Metropolitan Police gave false evidence under oath and thirdly, that the evidence linking Mr McNamee to the Hyde Park bombing was "bogus".
Mr McNamara added: "There is also a historical significance about this trial because we hope it brings to an end an era of judgments in the British courts leading to gross miscarriages of justice. That in the spirit of the Belfast Agreement, if this appeal is successful, as we believe it should be, it draws a line underneath the past sad events of 30 years. But also it will bring justice to a man wrongly accused and falsely incarcerated."
Another key reason for seeking the appeal was the conviction of Mr Dessie Ellis in the Republic in 1983. He was sentenced to 10 years for having explosives. When extradited to Britain in 1990 and put on trial a year later in connection with bombings in 1982-1984, he argued that as an IRA member he had manufactured devices for use in explosions but had not agreed they could be used in England.
He was acquitted but Mr McNamee's legal team has suggested the fingerprint evidence produced at Mr Ellis's trial was exactly the same as that used to convict Mr McNamee.
Mr Francis McNamee hoped his brother would be "completely exonerated" and called for an independent body to oversee the gathering and presentation of police evidence at trial. "All these miscarriages of justice have taken place because it has been left solely to the police to present their evidence," Mr McNamee said.
Mr Danny McNamee's case was the first to be referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, set up by the May Inquiry after the convictions of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four were over turned.