Joe Doherty

He was born into an Irish republican family, his grandfather was a member of the Irish Citizen Army which fought against British rule in the 1916 Easter Rising.

Joe Doherty (born 20 January 1955) is an Irish former volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who escaped during his 1981 trial for killing a member of the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1980.

The son of a docker, Doherty was born on 20 January 1955 in New Lodge, Belfast.

In the mid-1970s Doherty was convicted of possession of explosives and sentenced to six years' imprisonment in Long Kesh.

Doherty left school aged 14 and began work on the docks and as an apprentice plumber, before being arrested in 1972 on his seventeenth birthday under the Special Powers Act.

Doherty was interned on the prison ship HMS Maidstone and Long Kesh Detention Centre, and while interned heard of the events of Bloody Sunday in Derry, where 14 civil rights protesters were shot dead by the British Army.

This led to him joining the IRA after he was released in June 1972.

He cited Article 5(1)(c)(i) of the 1972 U.S.-UK Extradition Treaty, which provided that: "Extradition shall not be granted if ... the offense for which extradition is requested is regarded by the requested Party as one of a political character".

He was released in December 1979.

After his release, Doherty became part of a four-man active service unit nicknamed the "M60 gang" due to their use of an M60 heavy machine gun, along with Angelo Fusco and Paul Magee.

On 9 April 1980 the unit lured the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) into an ambush on Stewartstown Road, killing one constable and wounding two others.

On 2 May the unit were planning another attack and had taken over a house on Antrim Road, when an eight-man patrol from the SAS arrived in plain clothes, after being alerted by the RUC.

A car carrying three SAS members went to the rear of the house, and another car carrying five SAS members arrived at the front of the house.

As the SAS members at the front of the house exited the car, the IRA unit opened fire with the M60 machine gun from an upstairs window, hitting Captain Herbert Westmacott in the head and shoulder.

Westmacott, who was killed instantly, was the highest-ranking member of the SAS killed in Northern Ireland.

The remaining SAS members at the front, armed with Colt Commando automatic rifles, submachine guns and Browning pistols, returned fire but were forced to withdraw.

Magee was apprehended by the SAS members at the rear of the house while attempting to prepare the IRA unit's escape in a transit van, while the other three IRA members remained inside the house.

More members of the security forces were deployed to the scene, and after a brief siege the remaining members of the IRA unit surrendered.

The trial of Doherty and the other members of the M60 gang began in early May 1981, on charges including three counts of murder.

On 10 June, Doherty and seven other prisoners, including Angelo Fusco and the other members of the IRA unit, took a prison officer hostage at gunpoint in Crumlin Road Jail.

After locking the officer in a cell, the eight took other officers and visiting solicitors hostage, also locking them in cells after taking their clothing.

Two of the eight wore officers' uniforms while a third wore clothing taken from a solicitor, and the group moved towards the first of three gates separating them from the outside world.

They took the officer on duty at the gate hostage at gunpoint, and forced him to open the inner gate.

An officer at the second gate recognised one of the prisoners and ran into an office and pressed an alarm button, and the prisoners ran through the second gate towards the outer gate.

An officer at the outer gate tried to prevent the escape but was attacked by the prisoners, who escaped onto Crumlin Road.

As the prisoners were moving towards the car park where two cars were waiting, an unmarked RUC car pulled up across the street outside Crumlin Road Courthouse.

The RUC officers opened fire, and the prisoners returned fire before escaping in the waiting cars.

Two days after the escape, Doherty was convicted in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum recommended term of 30 years.

Doherty escaped across the border into the Republic of Ireland, and then travelled to the United States on a false passport.

He was arrested in the United States in 1983, and became a cause célèbre while fighting an ultimately unsuccessful nine-year legal battle against extradition and deportation, with a street corner in New York City being named after him.

He lived with an American girlfriend in Brooklyn and New Jersey, working on construction sites and as a bartender at Clancy's Bar in Manhattan, where he was arrested by the FBI on 28 June 1983.

Doherty was imprisoned in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, and a legal battle ensued with the British government seeking to extradite him back to Northern Ireland.

Doherty claimed he was immune from extradition as the killing of Westmacott was a political act, saying "It was an operation that was typical of all operations where we set up an ambush of a British military convoy... It is a war, and this was a military action".

In December 1984, Sprizzo ruled that under the existing treaty, Doherty could not be extradited as the killing of a British soldier engaged in active combat was a "political offense" and his actions did not involve violence against civilians, including government representatives.

In his finding, Spizzo wrote the political offense exception was extended to guerilla warfare in addition to "actual armed insurrections or more traditional and overt military hostilities".

He also wrote that the IRA "has both an organization, discipline, and command structure that distinguishes it from more amorphous groups such as the Black Liberation Army or the Red Brigade."

Spizzo also wrote that not every act constituted political offense:

How then is the political exception doctrine to be construed and what factors should limit its scope?

Not every act committed for a political purpose or during a political disturbance may or should properly be regarded as a political offense.

Surely the atrocities at Dachau, Aushwitz, and other death camps would be arguably political within the meaning of that definition.