Kelly and McFarlane extradited

By Seán Mac Bradaigh

December 1986 saw two Irish republicans, Gerry Kelly and Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane - participants in the mass break-out of republican POWs from Long Kesh in 1983 - handed over to the British and extradited from Holland in an RAF helicopter.

The eventual decision to extradite the two men was announced at a district court hearing in the Hague on 2 December after a request to delay such a move, pending a ruling from the European Commission on Human Rights, was refused.

McFarlane and Kelly were taken straight back to the Six Counties the following day and remanded to Lisburn Court on a series of charges relating to their part in the H-Blocks escape.

Just three years before, both men had led 38 republican prisoners to freedom in the most daring prison escape of modern Irish history.

The British Government was undoubtedly relieved that the case was over because it had embroiled it in a ten-month legal battle in the Dutch courts which focussed international attention on its repressive role in Ireland.

During the course of the legal proceedings, the Dutch government had allowed itself  to be pressurised by the British and ignored the advice of their own Supreme Court to make the extraditions conditional on guarantees of humane treatment. This caused grave disquiet in Dutch political circles.

During Kelly and McFarlane's long battle against extradition, the Dutch courts recognised that the struggle being waged by the IRA was a war of liberation. Britain's repressive record in Ireland was again put under the international spotlight as Dutch courts heard the details of the non-jury Diplock courts, show trials, torture and brutality used by the British in the Six Counties.

The Dutch Ministry of Justice had been inundated with hundreds of appeals on behalf of the men from human rights, trade union, legal and political groups across the world.

In Holland itself, three left wing political parties in parliament, individual MPs, the Dutch sections of the International Commission of Jurists, Amnesty International and Pax Christi opposed the extradition.

Far from 'criminalising' the Irish freedom struggle as the British had hoped, the extradition merely increased awareness of the political situation in the North of Ireland and boosted support for the republican cause.

Gerry Kelly and Brendan McFarlane were extradited from Holland on 2 December 1986 - 20 years ago.