The government has said it "remains firm" that the killers of Det Garda Jerry McCabe should not qualify for early release under the Belfast Agreement despite renewed Sinn Fein demands. A Government spokesman said last night the Government's position stands despite calls from the Sinn Fein President Mr Gerry Adams and prisoners' spokesman Mr Gerry Kelly for their release.
With almost all paramilitary republican prisoners, North and South, now out of jail, Mr Kelly said yesterday the continued incarceration of the four men convicted of Det Garda McCabe's manslaughter in 1996 "flies in the face of the letter and spirit of the Good Friday agreement and the whole ethos of conflict resolution". He said there could be no "two-tier system" in relation to releases.
However, the Government has always said the four would not be treated like the other IRA prisoners, and would serve out their sentences. At the time of the bank robbery in which Det Garda McCabe was shot dead, the IRA first denied it was involved, and later indicated some of its members might have been involved but that it was not an authorised operation. While it has not said so, the Government is understood to rely on these facts to maintain that the four men are in a different position from other IRA prisoners.
Pearse McAuley of Strabane, Jeremiah Sheehy of Rathkeale, Co Limerick, and Michael O'Neill and Kevin Walsh, both of Patrickswell, Co Limerick, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after murder charges were dropped when a State witness refused to give evidence. There was widespread belief the witness had been intimidated.
The Alliance Party has accused the Government of "cherry-picking" which prisoners should be released, saying the killers of Det Garda McCabe qualify in the same way as killers of RUC officers who have been freed.
Last December, the Government again assured the widow of Det Garda McCabe that his killers would not benefit from the early release scheme under the Belfast Agreement.
Mrs Anne McCabe received the assurance from the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, during a meeting she had sought after news emerged that the four killers were among IRA prisoners moved from Portlaoise Prison to the lower-security institution at Castlerea.
During the Belfast Agreement negotiations, Sinn Fein sought to have the four included in the early release scheme but were turned down. Mr Kelly repeated Sinn Fein's position yesterday that the agreement covers all paramilitary prisoners, "regardless of the jurisdiction they were or are jailed in . . . There is no rational, justifiable or legal basis on which to discriminate against the Castlerea prisoners."
He added: "I am conscious of the feelings of the McCabe family and I have no wish to exacerbate their distress but if we are to achieve a successful conflict resolution then all the prisoners of the conflict must be part of the solution and all the political prisoners covered by the Good Friday agreement must be released."