Our captive comrade DD McLaughlin is now facing extradition. A Free State judge today granted the extradition from the 26 counties. DD is bascally being surrendered to MI5 controled torture camp at Maghaberry Prison…..

………..Court grants extradition of Damien McLaughlin from the 26 counties to the North Ireland

The High Court has ordered the extradition of a man to Northern Ireland in connection with the alleged murder of prison officer David Black.

DD McLoughlin being extradited from the 26 Countie State to the occupied 6 County State of Ulster.

Damien Joseph McLaughlin(pictured above, (40), with an address at Glenties Rd, Belfast, was arrested in Donegal on foot of a European Arrest Warrant issued by Northern Ireland authorities earlier this year.

He is wanted to face allegations that he aided and abetted the murder of David Black on November 1st, 2012, and was in possession of an article suspected of being for the commission of murder.

 

Mr Black, a 52-year-old father of two, was shot dead on the M1 motorway by dissident republicans as he drove to work in Maghaberry jail.

Mr McLaughlin is also charged with engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism and of being a member of a proscribed organisation.

His barrister, David Leonard BL, opposed surrender on grounds that Mr McLaughlin believed he would be exposed to inhumane and degrading treatment if he was surrendered to Northern Ireland.

Mr Leonard said full body searches were carried out in Maghaberry Prison with unwarranted force and Mr McLaughlin would be subjected to a large number of forced body searches during his trial.

In a written judgment last month, Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly sought further information from Northern Irish authorities questioning the necessity for full-body searches in light of improvements in technology, such as was operated in Portlaoise Prison.

 

Ordering Mr McLaughlin’s surrender this evening, Ms Justice Donnelly said further information was obtained from Northern Irish authorities that showed, contrary to evidence before a Joint Oireachtas Committee, there was a necessity to carry out full body searches on the specific occasions of entry and exit to Maghaberry Prison.

In a five-page reply to the judge’s request for further information, the head of the Northern Irish Prison Service set out the “severe threat” to their staff from dissident republicans.

In about the last five years, two prison officer have been murdered, Ms Justice Donnelly noted.

She said the head of the Northern Irish authorities took issue with the term “strip search”. They said “full body” searching was the most effective method available to prevent illicit items being brought into prison while preserving the dignity of prisoners as far as was practicable.

Northern Irish authorities stated that prisoners were not required to completely strip naked or squat during such searches. They referred to full body searches being carried out internationally and stated that they were European Court of Human Rights or “ECHR compliant”.

The authorities went on to say they keep procedures under constant review and remain open to the possibility of adopting or deploying search methods which could prove as effective. However, to date, no available technology has proven to offer the same level of assurance, despite two tests on a range of available technologies in 2012 and 2015, northern Irish authorities stated.

Ms Justice Donnelly said the fact that Northern Irish authorities did not provide a detailed account of the testing was not a basis for rejecting the assessment.

She said the court had to assess the issue of necessity in the context of Northern Ireland. The fact that this jurisdiction had a “different standard of effectiveness” has to be viewed against what the High Court was told about the risk in Northern Ireland.

She said the Northern Ireland Prison Service explained how they operated in a very specific high risk environment, that they were conscious of the sensitivities around the issue of full body searches and the need to keep the requirements for this type of search under review.

Ms Justice Donnelly said the reply received from the Northern Irish Prison Service demonstrated that technology, as it existed at the present time, was limited in the context of security within the Northern Irish prison system and that full body searches were necessary on entering and exiting Maghaberry prison.

She said Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights or the related Constitutional provisions were not contravened. On that basis, she rejected Mr McLaughlin’s point of objection and accordingly, ordered his surrender.

With many thanks to: Stephen Murney for the origional statement.

End the EXTRADITION of Irish Republicans

Judge wants more information on strip searching in Damian McLaughlin extradition case

A High Court judge is seeking further information on strip searches in a North of Ireland prison before deciding whether to extradite a 40-year-old Belfast man wanted there in connection with the murder of prison officer David Black.

Mr Damien Joseph McLaughlin, with an address at Glenties Rd, Belfast, was arrested in County Donegal last March on foot of a European Arrest Warrant issued by Northern Ireland authorities.

He is wanted to face allegations that he aided and abetted in the murder of David Black on November 1st, 2012, and was in possession of an article suspected of being for the commission of the act of murder.

Mr Black, a 52-year-old father of two, was shot dead on the M1 motorway by dissident republicans as he drove to work in Maghaberry jail.

Mr McLaughlin is also charged with engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism and of being a member of a proscribed organisation. The maximum penalties applicable to each of the four offences are ten years, 15 years and two penalties of life imprisonment.

Previously, his barrister, David Leonard BL, claimed his client’s constitutional right and his right under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights not to be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment would be breached by virtue of the prison conditions he would be subject to in Maghaberry prison in the North of Ireland on surrender.

Mr Leonard said that the full-body searches (strip-searches) which took place in Maghaberry and also in conjunction with the background of controlled movement within the prison, reached the threshold of inhuman and degrading treatment.

High Court judge Ms Aileen Donnelly delivered her written judgement today, where she said she rejected the contention that restrictions on movement amounted to inhuman or degrading treatment.

Ms Justice Donnelly said she also rejected the respondent’s claim that he would be at real risk of being exposed to inhuman and degrading treatment because of the manner in which the strip-searches will be carried out.

However, the judge said the question of whether there is a necessity for a full-body search in light of improvements in technology was a separate issue. “The main evidence before me as to a lack of justification for these strip-searches is that technology exists to resolve the necessity for full-body searches,” she said.

She said the court also had credible evidence before it from information provided to a Joint Oireachtas Committee from highly respected persons that Portlaoise Prison operated technology which meant full-body searches were no longer required.

“This information questions whether full-body searches ie strip-searches are necessary in the absence of an indication by the technology,” she said.

The judge said she was entitled to rely upon the evidence presented to the Oireachtas Committee as a credible source of information for the purposes of assessing general conditions in which republican prisoners are held in Maghaberry. She said it amounted to “objective, reliable, specific and updated information” that rebutted the presumption that full-body searches were necessary on entry and exit to Maghaberry prison due to available technology.

“This means that the general conditions in Roe House (at Maghaberry prison) in so far as they relate to strip-searching raise a real risk that this respondent could be subjected to inhuman and degrading conditions on surrender,” she said.

Ms Justice Donnelly asked that further information be obtained in this jurisdiction and from the North of Ireland to show that this technology is limited or that there are specific reasons why strip-searching on entering and leaving the prison are necessary, or that Mr McLaughlin will not be subject to such strip-searching on each individual occasion he enters and leaves the prison.

The judge requested the Minister for Justice to provide her with “any relevant information” about the technology in use in this jurisdiction and she also requested further information from the UK.

A resumed hearing will take place on November 21 and Mr McLaughlin was remanded in custody until that date.

With many thanks to: Irish Republican Prisoner News. 

CUTS ROW BECOMING A FIASCO FOR VILLIERS

ON MONDAY the Department for Social Development publushed a report on the reasons people use food banks.

They concluded low income was the main reason. Astonishing. Who’da thought? There’s you thinking people toddled round to a food bank because they couldn’t get a bus to Tesco. You wonder how much that report cost. The banality of the report’s conclusion was matched perfectly by the response of the DSD minister. Go on, try to think of his name. Draw a blank? How appropriate. Here’s what he said almost in English. “Society – not just government – but collectively we need to take a strong look at why this is happening in the North of Ireland.” Surely his report had just told him? People aren’t paid enough. Another reason given was that people had to wait too long for benifit payment’s to kick in after losing their job or becoming to ill to work. Third, but not mentioned are benefit sanctions when people are refused cash because, for example, it’s deemed they aren’t trying to find a job. The minister was asking the wrong question. It’s not a matter of finding reasons for using food banks. It’s why has the number of food banks in the north increased from two, when our proconsul’s nasty government took over in 2010, to more than a dozen now? The reason is obvious. She’s a member of an increasingly unfair, unjust and inequitable government which on her occasional visits to the north she attempts to justify by mouthing irrelevancies designed for her own voters in one of the wealther, healthier parts of London. To give you an idea how much in common she has with people here you might like to know the average gross weekly earnings in her constituency are £675 compared to £518 for the UK as a whole and about £460 here. The average property price in Chipping Barnet is £370,000. Here it’s £120,000. In her constituency two per cent are on Job Seekers Allowance (JSA). The north has the highest claim count of the twelve UK regions. Oh, and there’s one food bank in Barnet.

On the basis of her (Villiers) obvious deep experience of poverty in her constituency our proconsul regularly repeats her demand that the parties here sign up to the welfare cuts she wants to impose and pushed through in the Stormont House agreement as the single most important priority. Let’s repeat here again that the financial annexe in the Stormont House agreement is a bye-ball. The Stormont House agreement dealt with the cuts announced in 2012-13, not 2015. The deal embodied in the agreement won’t approach the cuts announced in July never mind the coming autumn statement and the comprehensive spending review. To give them their due, last December only Sinn Féin (Shame Fein) was talking about arrangements to mitigate the impact of cuts for the next five years. Now there’s a glimmer of hope. Sinn Féin (Shame Fein) and the DUP have been edging closer in meetings over the summer towards the point where senior Sinn Féin people think there’s a chance the DUP might come on board to ask the British for an upgraded package to take account of the draconian proposals our proconsul plans to impose next year. The DUP response to George Osborne’s July cuts showed the first sign of alarm. Sammy Wilson, now happily no longer spouting contempt in the assembly, reacted by worrying that the different benefit caps for London and elsewhere were the first indication of regional variations in benefit. Some DUP people fear that presages regional variations in public sector pay which would hit the party’s middle-class voters. Furthermore Sinn Féin (Shame Fein) hope the DUP’s antennae have twitched at the prospect that our proconsul’s instructions from Whitehall will hit the working poor and not just people on benefit stupidly disdained by the DUP as free loaders. Besides, no secretary of state would want to preside over the collapse of the assembly. It wouldn’t look well on her CV after the fiasco of the West Coast franchise which she awarded in 2012 before being reshuffled. While the report on that flawed, erroneous bidding process cleared our proconsul, her Labour shadow minister said, ‘ministers failed completely in their responsibilities’. A second fiasco would look careless.
With many thanks to: Brian Feeney, The Irish news, for the origionial story.

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MARCH FOR JUSTICE 1972-2012 ( Still waiting for Justice To be Served ) from the Archives !

Posted on Behalf of :  Fionnbarra Ó Dochartaigh