Paramilitary gunman to serve two years for killing army recruitment sergeant
Good Friday peace deal means INLA gunman will serve only two years of 24-year sentence
A republican paramilitary who was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering an army recruitment sergeant in Derby 18 years ago will serve only about two years for the killing.
Declan Duffy was given a 24-year sentence at Stafford crown court after pleading guilty to the murder, but under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday agreement he will benefit from an early release scheme for prisoners. The 36-year-old also has the right to serve those two years in a jail in his native Northern Ireland.
Duffy, who is regarded as one of the most volatile republican paramilitaries to emerge during the latter years of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, admitted his part in the 1992 killing of Sergeant Michael Newman, a 34-year-old father of one who was shot dead in broad daylight in the centre of Derby by a three-man unit from the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).
Jailing Duffy, Mrs Justice Macur described the murder as a “heinous crime” committed for political reasons. “The death of Mr Newman that afternoon caused horror, panic, anger and anxiety, not merely for his family and his friends, but also for the public,” she said. “There was an atmosphere of fear created which was the intention of the act, quite apart from the killing of Michael Newman.”
In a statement yesterday, Duffy said: “I would never have spoken to the police in the past, but my war is over and there are things I have to get off my chest.
“This man was a family man and it is regrettable that he was killed. I would be happy to meet with any member of his family to explain to them the circumstances of why soldiers at that time were being targeted. The war is now over and I acknowledge the hurt caused to Irish and English people.”
Hundreds of jailed republican and loyalist paramilitaries were freed early as part of the deal negotiated in the 1990s to bring their organisations’ campaigns to an end and boost the peace process. Anyone convicted of Troubles-related crimes before 1998 can call on the de facto amnesty.
Duffy was expelled from the INLA last year after the faction he led in Dublin clashed with the organisation’s leadership in Belfast.
The murder of Newman, who was gunned down in a car park after leaving an army recruitment centre, was meant to have been the start of a renewed INLA terror campaign in Britain.
Newman, a Royal Signal Corps recruitment officer who had never served in Northern Ireland, was out of uniform and unarmed when he was shot. Another INLA member, Joseph Magee, was jailed in 2004 after pleading guilty to his murder. Anthony Gorman, who is also accused of the shooting, is fighting extradition from the Irish Republic
The INLA organisation Duffy joined as a teenager has now disbanded and decommissioned its weapons, stating that its “war” is over.
