Blair administration failed to extradite Irish terrorist wanted over MP's murder

Telegraph

17-04-2025

The Blair government moved too slowly to extradite a fugitive Republican terrorist wanted in connection with the murder of an MP, newly declassified documents reveal.
Officials admitted 'the bird has flown' after failing to act quickly enough to extradite Harry 'Basher' Flynn, the convicted terrorist gunrunner.
Flynn was named in court in the 1980s as chief of staff for the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), and is believed to have been a member since its creation in 1975 as a rival to the IRA.
He has been wanted in relation to the assassination of Airey Neave, one of Margaret Thatcher's closest confidantes.
Neave was Margaret Thatcher's shadow secretary for Northern Ireland and during the Second World War had been the first British prisoner of war escapee from Colditz Castle.
The 63-year-old was killed on March 30 1979, when a bomb planted under his Vauxhall Cavalier exploded as it left the House of Commons underground car park.
In 1975, Flynn was charged with stealing £3,500 in an armed bank robbery in Belfast but he tunnelled out of jail before his trial and continued to be listed as 'unlawfully at large' by Northern Ireland's prison service into the 21st-century.
After escaping from Maze Prison, he was caught five years later while rioting about hunger strikes outside the British Embassy in Dublin.
However, an extradition attempt failed. In 1986, Flynn was jailed for five years in France for illegally importing £70,000 of weapons including 100 light anti-tank weapons, 40 Kalashnikov rifles, three machine-guns and two mortars.
Britain tried to extradite him again in 1987, but failed as his crime was deemed 'political'.
Flynn, 71, now runs the Celts Well pub in Santa Ponsa, Majorca, where the INLA's emblem and memorabilia glorifying republican terrorists are on display.
Foreign Office papers released at the National Archives show that officials missed a third chance to drag him back to face justice from the Balearic island in the late 1990s.
Flynn was arrested in mid-July 1997, prompting an urgent missive to the Foreign Office from Madrid-based diplomat John Dew, who received the news from the consulate in Palma.
On July 15, he wrote: 'Flynn came to the consulate's attention recently when he was arrested after hitting a musician on the hand (drink having been taken).
'He is still in custody awaiting trial. The local police regard him as somewhat unstable. He allegedly hangs around an Irish haunt in Majorca called the Celts Bar in Calvia.'
Crown solicitors and the DPP in Northern Ireland were consulted, and officials found no theoretical barrier to extradition or statute of limitations on the robbery or escape offences, but the process did not move quickly enough.
David Brighty, Britain's ambassador in Madrid, wrote to the Foreign Office again on Aug 13, in a somewhat exasperated tone, to say that Flynn had been released after paying a large surety.
He said Flynn had been released ten days previously, after paying a Palma court some two million pesetas, about £10,000 after the money was brought to the island by a bagman from Dublin.
'The bird has flown'
Brighty said the consul in Palma had 'not felt able to make too many direct inquiries, since Flynn was using an Irish passport and was seen by the Spanish as being an Irish National'.
He added: 'It looks as if the bird has flown. If there were thought that we wished to take advantage of his detention, then we seem to have reacted pretty slowly to John Dew's teleletter of 15 July, which clearly signalled the opportunity.'
A memo circulated in London said that officials would have to ask the secretary of state if they wished to 'seek extradition given that we have already lost on two occasions and that a further court hearing may be an occasion for us to be accused of terrible things with little chance of rebuttal.'
'Assuming that we agree we should seek the return of Flynn,' an official wrote. 'I attach a draft submission to the secretary of state.'
A handwritten note then added: 'Not issued. Harry Flynn left the jurisdiction on 3 August. NFA for the moment.'
The identity of the musician and the outcome of the trial are not contained in the papers.
Flynn still runs the Celts Well bar and in 2019 declined to comment when approached by the Telegraph at his pub in Majorca.
The same year Flynn was named in a book by Patrick Bishop, a historian, as a founding member of the INLA who would probably 'never be brought to justice' for acts committed during the Troubles.
Flynn is believed to have lived in Santa Ponsa since the 90s in an apartment near the Celts Well.
At the height of fighting between the IRA and INLA he became a target of the former as a 'godfather' of the latter.
He survived an assassination attempt in Dublin in 1983 and another later shooting.
The INLA, which Flynn was thought to have joined in 1975, declared a ceasefire after the Good Friday Agreement.