The state was ordered by the High Court yesterday to discover all documents on Garda efforts to locate Belfast prison escaper Angelo Fusco during the 1 1/2 years between the making of Supreme Court orders for his extradition and his arrest last month.
Any communications since February 18th, 1998, between the Garda and Minister for Justice and the Northern Ireland authorities concerning efforts to locate Fusco to have him extradited must also be disclosed, said Mr Justice O'Neill.
The documents were sought by Dr Michael Forde SC to support Fusco's claim that no serious efforts were made by gardai to arrest him and execute the warrants for his extradition to Northern Ireland where he is wanted to serve a life sentence imposed in his absence for the murder of Capt Herbert Westmacott, of the SAS, almost 20 years ago.
Fusco, formerly of Belfast but with an address at Tralee, Co Kerry, claims the Garda authorities, and in particular the Garda
extradition section, had sufficient information to enable them to locate him but they chose not to act upon it. Fusco escaped from Crumlin Road Prison in 1981 and was convicted in his absence of the murder of Capt Westmacott. In 1982, he was arrested in Tralee and jailed for 10 years. Just before his release, extradition proceedings were begun, but the High Court upheld a challenge by Fusco to District Court orders for his extradition. The State appealed the High Court decision to the Supreme Court, which in February 1998 affirmed the District Court orders.
Ms Mary Fusco, wife of Fusco, said in an affidavit her husband had lived at home and with a friend in Tralee from February 1998, when the Supreme Court affirmed the District Court orders. Gardai never called to her home seeking her husband.
The court was also told that Fusco had lived with his brother in Dublin for a time and that gardai had called to the flat and spoke with his brother but had not looked for Fusco.
In forthcoming legal proceedings, Fusco will argue that, by the alleged failure of the State to enforce the extradition order within a month of the Supreme Court affirmation of it, the Garda authorities, and through them the Government, had effectively abandoned any serious attempt to enforce the order.
He will also argue the failure to seek a renewal of the extradition order within six months of the Supreme Court decision also meant the State had effectively abandoned any serious attempt to enforce the order.
Mr Justice O'Neill also made orders yesterday that sets of legal proceedings taken by Fusco relating to this latest attempt to extradite him should be heard together. A date for those proceedings has yet to be fixed.
