THE SUPREME Court has cleared the way for the trial of Maze Prison escaper Brendan McFarlane on charges connected with the 1983 kidnapping of supermarket boss Don Tidey.
The five-judge court yesterday unanimously dismissed an appeal by Mr McFarlane against the High Court's refusal to stop his trial. It is now expected the DPP will apply for a trial date before the non-jury Special Criminal Court.
Mr McFarlane (52), Jamaica Street, Belfast, was charged in January 1998 with falsely imprisoning Mr Tidey and having a firearm with intent to endanger life at Derrada Wood, Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, in 1983.
Mr Tidey was kidnapped by an IRA gang in 1983 and rescued after 23 days in captivity. A trainee garda, Gary Sheehan, and a member of the Defence Forces, Pte Patrick Kelly, were killed in a shoot-out with the gang when Mr Tidey was rescued.
Mr McFarlane was jailed in 1975 for an IRA bombing of a bar on the Shankill Road in which five people were killed. He escaped in the mass break out by 38 prisoners from the Maze Prison in September 1983, was arrested in Amsterdam in January 1986, extradited to Northern Ireland and released on parole from the Maze in 1997. He was arrested by gardaí in 1998, initiated his first judicial review challenge in 1999 and is on bail pending the outcome of the legal actions. In 2003, the High Court stopped his prosecution after hearing that a milk carton, plastic container and a cooking pot found at a hideout where Mr Tidey was imprisoned and on which fingerprints were recovered had gone missing from Garda headquarters. The fingerprints and some alleged remarks to gardaí constitute the case against Mr McFarlane.
In March 2006, the Supreme Court overturned the 2003 judgment. While criticising the Garda's loss of important evidence, the court said photographs of the fingerprint impressions and the results of a forensic examination of the missing items before their disappearance were still available.
In May 2006, Mr McFarlane issued fresh proceedings aimed at preventing his prosecution on grounds that court process delays prejudiced his right to a fair trial.
In November 2006, the High Court ruled that he had failed to establish that culpable or blameworthy delay within the State's court process had breached his rights and the Supreme Court heard his appeal against that decision last January.
In his judgment yesterday, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns said the courts had already held that all Mr McFarlane's complaints of pre-charge delay up to 1998 were groundless and that the only blameworthy delay in 1998 and 1999 was by him in failing to bring his challenge promptly. The case was ready for trial in 1999 and would have proceeded then had Mr McFarlane not brought the first of his judicial review challenges, the judge said.
