Balcombe Street gang is to be released

Six prisoners, five of whom are serving life sentences for terrorist-related offences, are to be released from prison under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, the Department of Justice announced early this morning.

Four of the prisoners are members of the Balcombe Street Gang which held a middle-aged couple hostage in a flat in London in 1975. They provoked anger among Northern unionists last Christmas when, on holiday release, they walked with fists clenched on to the platform of the Sinn Fein ardfheis.

The four are now out on Easter release and are not expected back at Portlaoise Prison until Wednesday, when they will be officially released. They are Edward Butler (50), from Limerick; Hugh Doherty (49), from Carrigart, Co Donegal; Harry Duggan (47), from Feakle, Co Kerry; and Martin Joseph O'Connell, from Kilkee, Co Clare.

They were chased through London by police after they were spotted outside a restaurant in Mayfair. The four fired into the restaurant with an automatic weapon before making off. The restaurant had been recently bombed and police were investigating a number of violent attacks and shootings in other areas at the time.

Following the 138-hour siege in Balcombe Street, the men were given life sentences in 1977 for murder and possession of firearms. They were transferred to the Republic on May 5th last year.

The fifth prisoner, John Kinsella (55), originally from Ballyfermot, Dublin, is serving a sentence at Wheatfield Prison in Dublin for his part in a bomb attack on the Warrington gas works in 1992 in which a man died. He was sent to prison in 1993 and would have been due for release in 2004. He was transferred to the Republic in December.

The sixth prisoner, William Quinn (51), whose address was given as San Francisco, California, was extradited to Britain from the US for the 1975 murder of a police officer. He was transferred to Portlaoise in May last year. Quinn and Kinsella are expected to be released after breakfast today.

The releases will bring to 36 the number of prisoners released from the State's jails since the Belfast Agreement.