SEAN Kinsella, an IRA man convicted of murdering Senator Billy Fox in 1974 who escaped but subsequently served 20 years in England, has been arrested and returned to Portlaoise Prison.
Kinsella (St), a Cavan man, returned to the Border area last year after serving 20 years of a life term imposed in England for arms and explosives charges arising out of the seizure of an IRA arms dump in Liverpool in 1975. A police officer was shot and badly injured during the operation against an IRA unit in the city.
In June 1974 he was convicted of the murder of Senator Fox at Tircoony, Co Monaghan. Senator Fox, then the only Protestant member of the Seanad, was killed when he came across a gang of 12 IRA men ransacking and burning a Protestant home in June 1973.
The senator was chased from the house, beaten and shot dead in a ditch. The IRA subsequently tried to blame loyalists from the killing.
Two months after conviction for the murder of Senator Fox, Kinsella was one of 19 IRA prisoners who broke out of Portlaoise Prison using plastic explosives to blow open the gates. He was on the run from the authorities until his arrest in Liverpool 11 months later.
He was finally released from a high-security prison in England after a judicial review of his case and that of four other IRA men who had also completed a 20-year tariff of imprisonment on life sentences.
Gardai had been quietly searching for Kinsella since his return from England and arrested him near Clones, Co Monaghan, yesterday. He was taken to Portlaoise to continue his life sentence.
Although there was no official comment yesterday, it is understood he might also face a charge of escaping from lawful custody.
The arrest marks a significant shift in policy towards republican prisoners since the ending of the IRA ceasefire in February last year.
Before the ending of the cease-fire the Government was in the process of speeding up the release of republican prisoners, and at that stage it is unlikely that Kinsella would have faced re-imprisonment.
Since the end of the ceasefire, the early-release policy has stopped and republican prisoners are again serving full prison tariffs for their crimes.
Three other men sentenced to life imprisonment with him for the Fox murder were already released on parole by the early 1990s.