CAMPAIGNERS had a good deal to celebrate early in March when Home Secretary Jack Straw finally decided that Roisin McAliskey should not be extradited to Germany. Straw said the medical evidence meant extradition would be "unjust and oppressive". Roisin had been detained by British authorities for sixteen months with no clear evidence to link her to an IRA attack at the Osnabruck barracks in 1996. Her mother, Bernadette McAliskey, prominent Republican and former MP for Mid Ulster, said from her home in Coalisland, Co Tyrone: "I'm relieved and delighted. We can now concentrate on getting her well again. Expectation of good news from the British government is never something | have lived with easily. And yet I have it and | appreciate it." Solicitor Gareth Peirce said her client's weak mental state had been caused by her original arrest and questioning at Castlereagh in November 1996.
"She was in effect given the makings of a complete mental breakdown by reason of the interrogation process in Castlereagh. The doctors who have had her under their care, and the doctors for the home secretary, agree that whatever happened to her in Castlereagh it has caused this ongoing effect for this length of time. You have to ask what is going on there? What is being allowed to go on there?" She said her client would now consider legal action against the RUC and the home office.
The Republic's Foreign Affairs Minister David Andrews also welcomed the British government's "enlightened decision" Roisin was arrested, while pregnant, at her home in Tyrone. She was held in the notorious Castlereagh Interrogation centre for six days and vindictively questioned for twelve hours a day, one hour on and one hour off. After being flown to London she was at one stage thrown into a filthy, faeces-smeared cell in an allmale prison at Belmarsh. Only an. international outcry forced her transfer to Holloway - where she was strip-searched over a hundred times and told that she would be forced to give birth shackled to a prison guard. As a result of the extensive support her case received she was eventually allowed' to give birth in the secure ward at Maudsley psychiatric hospital.
The appalling conditions inflicted on Roisin had been condemned by human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
The Home Office psychiatrist said her mental health had been seriously undermined by the trauma of her imprisonment at Holloway jail, and had continued to deteriorate while being held at the Maudsley. He is believed to have said she would be unable to face further interrogation on the allegations against her. Sinn Fein's Mid-Ulster MP, Martin McGuinness wished Roisin a Campaigning for Roisin: Bernadette McAliskey speedy return to full health and praised her family, friends and solidarity groups world-wide who had campaigned on her behalf. John Wadham, director of the civil rights group Liberty, welcomed the move. "It's a decision that should have been taken many months ago but it's still important that it's happened now." Unionist politicians have not suprisingly responded differently. Ulster Unionist MP Ken Maginnis said he was outraged; "No-one will be surprised if she now makes a miraculous recovery," he added. Home Office minister Mike O'Brien dismissed any suggestion that the move was a politically inspired, coming as it did on the day Sinn Fein's suspension from multi-party talks ended.
"It would be wrong for political considerations to interfere with a decision to order an extradition or not," he said. Certainly there has been little indication that the British government is likely to bow to nationalist opinion in the peace talks or anywhere else - they are far too busy playing the orange card.
Roisin owes her freedom not to the generousity of the British government but to the thousands of supporters across the world who tirelessly worked to expose her arrest, imprisonment and torture for the scandal it was.