Republican News · Thursday 10 April 2003

NIO won't pay out on quashed conviction

A 38-year-old County Antrim man who spent ten years in jail has been refused compensation by the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) despite the fact that his conviction was quashed by the North's top judge, Judge Carswell.

Gerard Magee was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in 1991 on the basis of statements he made during 30 hours of RUC interrogation in Castlereagh interrogation centre in Belfast in 1988. During his detention, Magee was refused access to his solicitor.

In 2000, the European Court of Human Rights found that the British government had broken article Six of the European Convention by denying Magee access to his solicitor, and his appeal was referred to the Court of Appeal in 2001. Hearing that appeal, Carswell said Magee's conviction could not be justified in light of the ruling of the European Court and overturned it.

But now the NIO has now refused Magee's claim for compensation.

In a letter, the NIO's Criminal Law branch told Magee that although the conviction had been overturned by both the European Court and the Court of Appeal, he was not entitled to compensation because the quashing of his sentence had not proved beyond reasonable doubt that there had been a miscarriage of justice, and he was still not an "innocent man".

Magee has, however, been granted grounds to launch a judicial review against the decision.

Commenting, Gerard Magee said that money wasn't an issue that it was about the British government refusing to admit they sent an innocent man to prison.

"My case is like many other Irish people who have been unfairly convicted and even when the British government have been forced to admit they sent innocent people to prison, they still won't change their attitude."

Magee was released from prison in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, having spent ten years in the H Blocks.