The appeal by Mr John Gilligan against 18 extradition warrants - including one for the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin in June 1996 - was turned down in the London High Court yesterday.
Lord Justice May and Mr Justice Astell rejected an application for a writ of habeas corpus attempting to quash an extradition order made at Belmarsh Magistrates Court last September. The appeal was argued before them in December.
Mr Gilligan, who has been in custody in Belmarsh High Security prison since October 1996 has 14 days to appeal against the ruling. It is expected that he may appeal to the High Court for leave to petition the House of Lords. Should this fail, he may appeal directly to the House of Lords.
In dealing with the murder charge, the judges concluded that the Belmarsh Court Magistrate, Mr David Cooper, who had sent Mr Gilligan for trial on the English drug-related charges he faced following his arrest at Heathrow in October 1996 with £330,000 in cash in his possession, and subsequently ordered his extradition, was plainly obliged to order Mr Gilligan to be delivered up on the murder warrant.
The drug-related trial was technically adjourned when the warrant for Mr Gilligan's extradition to Ireland was served.
Counsel for Mr Gilligan, Ms Clare Montgomery QC, who appeared with Mr James Lewis, had argued that there had been an abuse of process and that the extradition process had been deliberately manipulated.
However, the judges in their ruling said that the decision of the English prosecuting authorities to subordinate the English prosecution to the Irish proceedings was fully justified. "There was good reason for Mr Gilligan to be tried in one jurisdiction only," they concluded.
The ruling also referred to the fact that the trial of Mr Gilligan on the English charges remained in existence. They declared that prosecution was justified so long as the Irish extradition proceedings were contested, in seeking to keep alive the possibility of a trial in England if Mr Gilligan were not extradited, "thus taking the line that it was in the interests of justice that he should be tried somewhere".
Counsel for Mr Gilligan had argued that the charge of murder in the extradition warrant did not correspond to the English offence of murder because it did not enable the court to consider if a person was liable for a lesser charge on grounds of provocation or diminished responsibility.
Lord Justice May and Mr Justice Astell stated that apart from legal definition, murder was an ordinary English word meaning intentional killing.