NO EARLY RELEASE: If a soldier is convicted in the future of what would have been deemed a scheduled offence between 1973 and 1998, they could apply for early release under the Good Friday Agreement. However, that still leaves an anomaly in respect of crimes carried out between the start of the Troubles in 1969 and 1973.
The BBC reports the delayed start of the Serious Organised Crime Agency’s [SOCA] application for a civil recovery order of property and assets belonging to Seamus Francis Mullan. A former member of the Provisional IRA who was serving a life imprisonment sentence for the 1985 murder of an off-duty RUC officer before being freed on early release licence in 1998, Mullan was arrested in 2006 on money laundering and fraud charges – at the time he was described in court as a “disaffected republican”. Subsequently, the …
