Bid to lengthen jail term for supergrass is allowed to proceed
AN appeal against the six-anda-half-year prison term imposed on a loyalist paramilitary chief turned informer who admitted five murders can proceed, senior judges ruled yesterday.
Gary Haggarty’s lawyers claimed the attempt to secure a longer sentence should be halted because the Public Prosecution Service missed a deadline.
Papers were submitted 25 minutes after the close of court business at the end of a 28-day limit for lodging an appeal, they argued.
But Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan held that “fortunately or otherwise” someone appeared to take the documents. He confirmed: “We have concluded that the reference has been delivered in time and has been served in accordance with the statute and rules on time.”
The case will now proceed to a full hearing at the Court of Appeal in May. Prosecutors are challenging the sentence handed down to Haggarty on the basis that it was unduly lenient. The
45-year-old former commander of an UVF unit in north Belfast was jailed earlier this year after confessing to hundreds of terrorist offences.
His catalogue of paramilitary crime extended over 16 years, from 1991 to 2007, and included the following murders: Sean McParland (55), a father-of-four from south Belfast gunned down while babysitting his grandchildren at a house in Skegoniel Avenue, Belfast in February 1994; Catholic workmen Eamon Fox (44) and Gary Convie (24), shot dead close to a building site on Belfast’s North Queen Street in May 1994; Sean McDermott, a 37-year-old Catholic found shot dead in his car near Antrim in August 1994; and John Harbinson, murdered after being handcuffed and beaten by a UVF gang on the Mount Vernon estate in north Belfast in May 1997.
He also admitted five attempted murders, including against police officers; multiple counts of conspiracy to murder; directing terrorism; and membership of a proscribed organisation.
Haggarty pleaded guilty as part of a controversial state deal that offered a reduced sentence in return for providing evidence on other terror suspects. As a consequence, his prison term was slashed from 35 years to sixand-a-half years due to the assistance provided to police.
Under the terms of the agreement signed back in 2010 he supplied information on scores of loyalist killings and attempted murders. Only one man is to be prosecuted over a murder using his evidence.
Now the PPS is seeking to have his sentence reviewed and increased.