Maze prison escapee Brendan McFarlane today lost his latest legal challenge to stop his trial over the kidnap of a supermarket boss 25 years ago.
In a brief hearing in the Supreme Court, five judges revealed they had reached a unanimous decision to throw out the appeal.
Former IRA prisoner McFarlane, from Jamaica Street, west Belfast, was charged in January 1998 with falsely imprisoning Don Tidey at Derrada Wood, Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, in November and December 1983.
He was also charged with possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and is facing trial in the Special Criminal Court.
Mr Tidey was one of Ireland's best known businessmen when he was abducted and held in a primitive hideout at Derrada Wood a quarter of a century ago. When gardai and the Army moved into rescue the supermarket chief there was a shoot out.
Gary Sheehan (23) a Garda trainee, from Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan and Patrick Kelly (35) an Army private from Moate, Co Westmeath, were both shot dead.
The captors escaped during the confusion but left behind key fingerprint evidence on a milk carton, a plastic container and a cooking pot.
The State has alleged that McFarlane's fingerprints were on these items although they have since been lost in Garda headquarters, in Dublin's Phoenix Park.
While photographs of the fingerprints remain, the loss of the original evidence sparked an initial challenge by McFarlane in 1999 which led to a decade of court proceedings.
The 55-year-old father of three had been in prison at the Maze since 1975 for his part in the IRA bombing of a bar on the Shankill Road in which five people were killed.
He was the OC (officer commanding) of the Provisional IRA prisoners at the Maze prison at the time of the hunger strike in 1981. He was arrested in Amsterdam in January, 1986, after the prison break two and half years earlier and was extradited to Northern Ireland.
After being released on parole from the Maze in 1997 he was arrested by gardai outside Dundalk in January, 1998.