Dessie O'Hare, the so-called "Border Fox", opted out of the structured paramilitary regimes in Portlaoise Prison before the Belfast Agreement early release scheme for prisoners, Government sources said yesterday. O'Hare has served nearly 14 years of a 40-year term. His co-accused, Fergal Toal, who was also sentenced to 40 years, was released last year.
O'Hare is regarded as one of the most unstable and dangerous figures to have emerged during the Troubles.
During most of his period of imprisonment he has refused to co-operate with the prison regime and has spent long periods in isolation.
Although he was not convicted of murder, O'Hare is regarded as being one of the most vicious figures to have emerged in the Troubles. He was regarded as so violent that he was pushed out of the Provisional IRA and reputedly joined the extreme republican group, the Irish National Liberation Army.
However, the INLA was at that time in the middle of an internal feud and he was only associated with an element based in the Border area. The INLA never recognised him as a member and he was not regarded as an INLA prisoner in Portlaoise.
When imprisoned O'Hare claimed to be the leader of his own socialist-republican faction and remained isolated in Portlaoise. During the early 1990s, he associated with INLA prisoners and Dublin criminals, including John Gilligan, who was acquitted of murdering the journalist Veronica Guerin but again imprisoned two weeks ago for 28 years for drug trafficking.
O'Hare did not accept orders or association with the INLA group in Portlaoise but has recently claimed again to be an INLA prisoner.
O'Hare was at the centre of a massive search after kidnapping Mr John O'Grady, a dentist, from his home in Cabinteely, Co Dublin, in October 1987, holding him in a basement in Parkgate Street, Dublin. When a ransom demand for Mr O'Grady, a son-in-law of millionaire businessman Dr Austin Darragh, was not met, O'Hare chopped the tops off two of Mr O'Grady's fingers and left them along with a photo of the stumps in a cathedral.
After three weeks on the run, he was arrested during a shoot-out in which he was injured and a companion was killed.
His application for early release is based on a sworn affidavit in which he claims he is the officer in command of the INLA wing in Portlaoise and is in total support of the Belfast Agreement.