Convictions connected to Maze escape quashed by Court of Appeal

Six former internees are to have their convictions for escaping from the Maze Prison in the 1970s quashed, the Court of Appeal ruled today.

Judges held that the men were not being lawfully detained at the time of their breakouts.

The verdict is based on a similar outcome reached in a previous challenge by former Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams.

Appeals were mounted by Fra McCann, who represented the party as an MLA for West Belfast, and five others: Patrick Joseph Holden, Anthony John Hughes, James Joseph Walsh, Patrick Fitzsimmons and Francis Noel Johnston. All of them had been detained under Interim Custody Orders (ICOs) as part of a policy of internment without trial introduced at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

In September 1975 they were convicted of escaping from lawful custody in connection with an incident the previous November.

Another republican prisoner, Hugh Gerard Coney, was shot dead during the bid to escape from the prison, also known at the time as Long Kesh internment camp.

But in May 2020 the Supreme Court in London quashed Mr Adams’ convictions for attempts to escape from lawful custody in 1973 and 1974. Justices declared his ICO invalid because it had not been personally authorised by the Northern Ireland Secretary at the time, Willie Whitelaw.

Based on that determination, lawyers for the six men argued that the same legal flaw featured in their cases.

No submissions were made by the Public Prosecution Service in support of the safety of the convictions.

Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan ruled that the same invalidity applied in each case.

She confirmed: “We are satisfied that we should grant leave to appeal and quash the convictions.”

Outside court a solicitor for the six men, Pádraig Ó Muirigh, “the legality of the disastrous policy of Internment has been brought into fresh focus by this decision of the Court of Appeal”.