Former IRA terrorist wanted in Northern Ireland is formally surrendered by High Court
In 2007 Robert Duffy pleaded guilty to attempting to murder Colin O'Neill at the Emerald Bar in Dundalk
A former IRA terrorist who murdered a man in Northern Ireland and fired a shot-gun into the face of another man in the Republic has had his surrender to UK authorities formally ordered by the High Court.
Robert Duffy (52) was convicted in 1996 of the murder of John Gibson in Belfast in October 1993 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released after just four years under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in July 2000. On March 10, 2007, he attempted to murder Colin O'Neill at the Emerald Bar in Dundalk, Co Louth, by firing a shotgun into Mr O'Neill's face at point-blank range. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2008, having pleaded guilty to that offence.
Last year, it emerged that Duffy was being considered for parole, prompting the Northern Irish authorities to seek to have Duffy extradited so he can be returned to prison for breaching the terms of his release by attempting to murder Mr O'Neill. Among the terms of his release under the GFA was that he must not be a danger to the public.
At a previous extradition hearing, Ms Justice Caroline Biggs heard that Duffy had engaged with the parole board while in prison and was being considered for temporary release. She said a report from 2021 stated that Duffy had engaged well with probation services, was a trusted prisoner, is considered at a "moderate to low risk of reoffending" and no longer affiliated with any paramilitary organisation. He was being held at the low-security Shelton Abbey prison at the time but was then sent to Cloverhill and Wheatfield prisons as a result of the extradition proceedings. However, last month, Duffy was refused parole by the board.
In June of last year, Ms Justice Biggs dismissed objections to Duffy's extradition to Northern Ireland but said she would not order his extradition at that time. She added that if the parole board had decided to release Duffy, he would have been entitled to bail with regard to the High Court extradition proceedings. Ms Justice Biggs said she did not want the extradition proceedings before her to be a bar to Duffy being released by the parole board.
Ms Justice Biggs noted that the Northern Irish authorities had given assurances that Duffy would be free to apply for release to the Sentence Review Commission once he has been returned to prison in Northern Ireland. Duffy had objected to his extradition to Northern Ireland but Ms Justice Biggs dismissed all grounds of objection.
Ronan Kennedy SC and Brian Storan BL, for Duffy, had argued that the extradition application had amounted to an abuse of process, considering the amount of time that had passed between the Dundalk shooting in 2007 and the April 2022 warrant issued by UK authorities.
In formally making the order, Ms Justice Biggs said there would be no violation of Duffy's rights in making the order for his surrender to the North. However, Duffy cannot be surrendered to the North until he is released or paroled from prison in the South.
Ms Justice Biggs said time constraints on extradition proceedings means that the order has a life-span of 15 days plus an additional 10 days and that if it is not executed by that point, Duffy will appear again before the High Court and the warrant will have lapsed.