Legal bid to halt extradition renewed
Lawyers for one of the men linked to the Omagh bombing atrocity vowed yesterday to continue legal moves to stop him being extradited to Lithuania.
Liam Campbell (46), from Upper Faughart, Dundalk, is wanted to face charges that in 2006 he was involved in a plot to smuggle a large quantity of powerful guns and explosives from Lithuania to the Real IRA in the Republic.
In a landmark legal action by relatives of some of those killed in the 1998 Omagh bombing, a judge said there was “cogent evidence” that Campbell was a member of the RIRA’s ‘army council’ which admitted causing the explosion.
Campbell was already facing extradition proceedings in Dublin when he was arrested in south Armagh in May after crossing the border to take his wife to work in Bessbrook.
He has been in custody since then and in July the recorder of Belfast ruled that the extradition case should now be heard in Belfast.
An application for a writ of habeas corpus challenging that decision was dismissed and yesterday two judges in the High Court in Belfast set out their reasons in a 29-page reserved judgement.
Lord Justice Higgins and Mr Justice McCloskey said: “We consider that it would be wrong to overlook the fact that within two weeks of the Recorder’s ruling, the Republic of Lithuania withdrew its extradition request in the Dublin High Court.
“It seems to us that the effect of this development was to extinguish the cornerstone of the abuse of process complaint advanced to the recorder.
“Self-evidently, this complaint loses much of its momentum as a result of the discontinuance of the associated proceedings in the Republic of Ireland.”
However, solicitor Peter Corrigan said afterwards: “We intend taking this matter to the Court of Appeal.”
An appeal would probably mean that the extradition hearing, due to start at Belfast Recorder’s Court on November 30, is likely to be put back.
