McKenna to be extradited?
Gardai have begun extradition proceedings against self-styled human rights campaigner Vincent McKenna after the Director of Public Prosecutions in Dublin ruled that it would press child sex abuse charges against him.
According to reports, the Gardaí have asked McKenna, said to have been questioned in Monaghan barracks last year about the sexual abuse of children, to travel to the 26 Counties voluntarily for further questioning.
extensive file compiled by the Gardaí in the course of a yearlong investigation into allegations that McKenna sexually assaulted a teenage girl is now with the DPP.
McKenna, originally from County Tyrone but now living in Belfast, has courted publicity as a self-proclaimed human rights campaigner, particularly attacking republicans.
He maintains that the sex abuse charges being investigated by the Gardaí are false and that the Guards and republicans are involved, together, in a conspiracy to discredit him.
McKenna, a former spokesperson for the now disbanded FAIT (Families Against Intimidation and Terror) organisation, now runs the `Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau', yet despite the controversy surrounding him, both media and unionist politicians court him to make anti-republican claims.
Last year, at the annual conference of Robert McCartney's United Kingdom Unionist Party, McKenna named from the platform two men who he said had carried out the Omagh bombing.
Detective Inspector Joseph Sullivan from Monaghan barracks said last year that he was investigating a case of a ``serious sexual nature'' and that he was confident of a prosecution.