TWO IRA men jailed for life for their involvement in the murder of two British soldiers in 1988 have walked free from the Maze prison. The men were among four prisoners released yesterday from prisons in the North under the terms of the Belfast Agreement.
The events leading to the deaths of army corporals, David Howes and Derek Wood, were captured by television crews and photographers when the soldiers drove into the funeral cortege of IRA member Kevin Brady, who was killed in an attack on a funeral at Milltown Cemetery by loyalist Michael Stone three days earlier.
IRA men Mr Alex Murphy and Mr Henry Maguire were jailed in 1989 for their part in the torture and shooting of the soldiers on waste ground in west Belfast. At their court hearing the Northern Ireland Lord Chief Justice describe the murders as "particularly savage and vicious".
The killings came at the end of a sequence of deaths, which started with the SAS attack on three IRA members in Gibraltar. At the funerals of these IRA members at Milltown Cemetery, three mourners died during the attack by Stone.
Mourners in the Brady cortege claim that when they heard the soldiers' car screech to a halt they believed that they were about to be attacked by loyalists. As the driver of the unmarked car tried to reverse his path was blocked by two black taxis. Angry mourners then swarmed the car.
The men were dragged from their vehicle and taken to a nearby sports ground where they were stripped to their underwear and beaten. The two men convicted, Mr Murphy and Mr Maguire, then took the soldiers to waste ground where they were shot repeatedly by two gunmen.
A loyalist life sentence prisoner and a life sentence prisoner not aligned to any paramilitary group were also freed yesterday.