INLA Prisoner of War Dessie O'Hare on His Legal Struggles

Tuesday August 13, 2002 14:13

by Dessie O'Hare - OC INLA POWS Portlaoise

I can only speak truthfully and accurately concerning my own case, where the Irish Government have failed to implement the Good Friday Agreement,i.e. their decision to arbitrarily exclude me from the early release scheme. The scheme was set out in the GFA, for the phased release of all Political Prisoners, and a completion time scale of two years meant that any POWs remaining after June 2000 would be automatically released. The Irish and British Governments passed appropriate laws to facilitate the releases and began processing the POWswhich basically went on the lines of 'first in, first out'.

INLA Prisoner of War Dessie O'Hare on His Legal Struggles

I can only speak truthfully and accurately concerning my own case, where the Irish Government have failed to implement the Good Friday Agreement,i.e. their decision to arbitrarily exclude me from the early release
scheme. The scheme was set out in the GFA, for the phased release of all Political Prisoners, and a completion time scale of two years meant that any POWs remaining after June 2000 would be automatically released. The Irish and British Governments passed appropriate laws to facilitate the releases and began processing the POWswhich basically went on the lines of 'first in, first out'.

The British released almost immediately those Prisoners who had served out most of their sentence, then prisoners who were deemed the least threat to the Peace Process were released, after that they began releasing high risk
prisoners and finally they began releasing those who had just begun their sentences. These phased releases continued for two years until the cut off
date (28-06-00) was reached, and on that day all the remaining political prisoners were released en masse. But I wasn't released on that date with
all the remaining prisoners, so I immediately began legal proceedings to contest the legality of my detention, citing that under the Good Friday
Agreement I should have been released by June 2000 and was therefore illegally detained.

The legal proceedings went by way of judicial review. Initially the government said that I failed to apply for release under the GFA. When
this was done, they shifted the goalposts and said I wasn't a POW proper! So when my application to rejoin the INLA wing in the prison was accepted, they then shifted the goalposts again by saying my case could not be processed because I wasn't speaking (I had taken a yogic vow of silence and hadn't spoken for six years). When I made a forty-page written submission, they simply rejected it and said I would have to speak! So I spoke, which led them to shift the goalposts yet again and this time they
stooped to Siberian tactics and said I wasn't complying with the process by refusing to allow a psychiatric report. So this forced me to acquiesce and allow a psychiatric report (which resulted in a clean bill ofhealth). Then two months after that report was made, they ordered another one and when that psychiatric report failed to turn up anything detrimental that they could present in court, they then ordered a different psychiatrist! And, when this report was also a favourable one, they then
ordered a fourth report from another doctor; this time their own clinical psychologist from the Department of Justice, and after exhaustive
interviews conducted over three days with Dr. Des O'Mahony, I received a further healthy Compus Mentis report.

The disgraceful and malicious intent of those who put me through all these hoops is all the more accentuated by the very fact that both Republican and Loyalist Prisoners who were convicted of very serious crimes, including capital murder, were all released under the terms of the Good Friday
agreement and not a single one of them was submitted to the demands that have been placed on me. Anyhow, after a year's protracted legal wrangling in the courts, the then Minister for Justice, John O'Donohue, officially recognised me as a Qualifying Prisoner under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

The Governments started releasing the first POWs under the terms of the GFAfour years ago and I am beginning my 23rd year behind these prison bars. Ihave been in this jail continuously since 1979 (with one year's exception,1987) and in all of these 22 years I haven't been given a single days
temporary release despite many family tragedies and the death of my father
(RIP).

The double standards prove there is no parity of esteem being shown in my case, every spurious excuse the Department has used to deny me my freedom has been deemed null and void; yet the Department continues to hold me as a Political Prisoner when most other Qualifying prisoners have long been released. Even my co-accused, who were given the same sentences as me,have long been released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Reneging on the decision to release me only adds insult to the spirit of the GFA, the very same spirit of peace and reconciliation that was born in the prisons, surely someone can muster up the courage to release one of the last qualifying prisoners.

Yours in solidarity,

Qualifying Political Prisoner
Dessie O'Hare
Portlaoise Prison
30 July 2002