TWO Scots Guardsmen, serving life sentences in Northern Ireland for murdering a teenager while on duty, yesterday lost their latest legal bid for freedom.
Campaigners backing Jim Fisher, 28, from Ayr, and Mark Wright, 24, from Arbroath, last night called on Secretary of State Mo Mowlam to consider their early release as a new climate of peace beckons in the Province.
Yesterday Mr Justice Coghlin, sitting in the High Court in Belfast, rejected the soldiers' application for a judicial review of the Northern Ireland Secretary's refusal to refer their case immediately to the Life Sentence Review Board.
He said they had not made out a sufficient case of procedural impropriety or irrationality to quash the Secretary of State's decision.
The pair - who are still in the Army - will now have to wait until October for the board's next appraisal.
Mrs Isobel Wright said she was ''very disappointed'' at the latest development. But she vowed that the fight would continue to secure the early release of her son and his colleague.
Mr George Foulkes, Labour MP for Carrick, Cumnock, and Doon Valley, said he was not surprised that the latest legal bid had failed.
However, he said he believed a chance of securing the guardsmen's early release remained, given recent peace process developments involving the early release of prisoners who had committed crimes in ''more awful circumstances''.
Mr Foulkes, who will next week discuss with Ms Mowlam the possibility of the soldiers' case being reviewed, said: ''I am certainly not challenging the verdict of the court, but there was no intention to murder and they have been model prisoners.
''Given that other prisoners are being released, and given that the conflict looks to be moving to an end, the climate is right for an early release.''
The two guardsmen were jailed in September, 1992, for shooting 18-year-old Peter McBride, whom they believed was wielding a coffee jar bomb.
At the end of his 18-page judgment, Mr Justice Coghlin granted a declaration that there had been a failure to provide proper and adequate reasons for the decision to distinguish the cases of Fisher and Wright from that of Private Ian Thain. He was convicted of murder and released after serving a shorter time in prison.
The judge said he would remit Fisher and Wright's cases to the Secretary of State ''for further consideration in accordance with the declaration''.
The Secretary of State had decided that Fisher and Wright ought to serve a ''significantly longer term of imprisonment'' to reflect the culpability of their crime, the judge said.
Lawyers for Fisher and Wright had argued they were entitled to immediate release as they had been in prison much longer than two other soldiers convicted of murdering innocent civilians - Private Thain and paratrooper Lee Clegg.
Retired Scots Guard officer General Murray Naylor - chairman of the Fisher and Wright Release Group - said campaigners were disappointed with yesterday's outcome but hopeful that the Northern Ireland Secretary would look at the case again before October.
However, the victim's father, also named Peter McBride, welcomed the judgment. He said: ''I am glad they are staying in jail for another while. We don't expect them to be the only two left in jail if early releases start, but we don't expect them to be the first out.''
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article