Two UVF leaders may be released from the Maze prison in Northern Ireland next week to attend a meeting with the Sentences Review Commission to discuss the issue of prisoners.
The Progressive Unionist Party is expected to meet the commissioners on Monday and two of the UVF's jail leaders, David McCullogh and Samuel Austin, yesterday requested permission to attend the meeting. Mr William Smyth, the party's prisons spokesman, said he expected the request to be granted. "It would be good if the prisoners were there, so that any queries of questions they will be able to ask them direct rather than get them second hand from us." Last week, the IRA's prison leaders, Padraic Wilson and Geraldine Ferrity, were given eight hours special leave to join a Sinn Fein delegation for a meeting with the commission.