1983 escape IRIS
24/07/2008
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IRIS
THE GREATEST ESCAPE
Clarke/Finucane judgement
• Jim Clarke and Dermot Finucane
T
HE 26 COUNTY Supreme Court’s ruling on 13 March 1990 in the extradition case against Dermot Finucane was a landmark decision which went some way to reversing the erosion of the “political exemption” clause in the 1965 Extradition Act that had taken place throughout the 1980s. Taken in conjunction with a further ruling on submissions by Finucane and Jim Clarke 56
that they would be ill-treated if returned to jail in the Six Counties, the Supreme Court decision considerably reduced the likelihood of further attempts to extradite any of the other 1983 escapers. The decision to free both men rocked the British political establishment. Thatcher described it as “grossly offensive and an encouragement to terrorists”, while the NIO ‘security’ minister, John Cope, said it was a “very mistaken and misleading judgement” and “a deep insult to the prison regime in
Northern Ireland”. The core of the judgement in Dermot Finucane’s case involved the repudiation of an earlier High Court ruling upholding his extradition. The lower court had held that Finucane, as a member of the IRA, could not qualify for political exemption under the 1965 Act because the IRA’s aim was to overthrow the organs of the state. This ruling, in turn, was based on an earlier Supreme Court ruling in 1985, the case of John Quinn, where the INLA’s objectives were described