Dessie O'Hare - Attempts at Securing Release

Attempts At Securing Release

In 2000 O'Hare requested a judicial review, stating that he should have been released under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. On 6 April 2001 the High Court reserved judgement on the case pending information from the Department of Justice. On 8 December 2002 O'Hare was transferred to Castlerea Prison in preparation for his release, and a week later issued a statement saying his "war was over".

The Irish Republican Socialist Party (INLA's political wing) also mounted a campaign for his release, stating, "Dessie's "crime", if 'crime' it was, was to be an active Republican".

O'Hare was first granted temporary release from prison in November 2003 when he attended a weekend long course on conflict resolution in Glencree, and he was granted further periods of temporary release in November 2004 and March 2005. In November 2005 he was returned to Portlaoise Prison after he was caught with a mobile phone and a bag of pills when returning to Castlerea from temporary release, which jeopardised his chance of release on licence.

O'Hare launched a new High Court bid for freedom in April 2006, and was granted extended temporary release. He returned to Northern Ireland, and was believed to be living in Newtownhamilton in South Armagh. The Police Service of Northern Ireland stated O'Hare will not be arrested on suspicion of involvement in up to 30 unsolved killings because the alleged offences predate the Good Friday Agreement. However, investigations have not been ruled out by the Historical Enquiries Team, which has been assigned to probe all unsolved killings during the Troubles.

Read more about this topic:  Dessie O'Hare

Famous quotes containing the words attempts at, attempts, securing and/or release:

    [Allegory] is a flight by which the human wit attempts at one and the same time to investigate two objects, and consequently is fitted only to the most exalted geniuses.
    Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)

    Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.
    Rebecca West (1892–1983)

    In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.
    Edmund Burke (1729–1797)

    The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.
    Walt Whitman (1819–1892)