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Republican Political Prisoners wish to highlight and condemn the repeated refusal of the Maghaberry Administration to allow compassionate temporary release for Republican Prisoners. The issue was starkly demonstrated today with Roe 3 Republican Prisoner, Eamon Cassidy, being denied the opportunity to attend his brother’s funeral. Republican Prisoners have always honoured compassionate release conditions; something that is widely accepted, including in legal circles, and more importantly all the empirical evidence, historically and recently, supports this. Such a vindictive and punitive measure is aimed at attacking the family life of Republican Prisoners as a means of retribution and repression and needs to be vocally condemned.
In the last week three Roe 4 Republican Prisoners (Ta McWilliams, Neil Hegarty and Gavin Coney) were also denied compassionate parole for First Holy Communion’s, including one whose home leave paroles begin next month, with his final release date this October. Spitefully the Jail Administration even refused his request to bring one of his parole days forward to accommodate this.
Republican Prisoners have been repeatedly responded to with generic refusals to requests for compassionate release. The Jail Administration is clearly content that there is no criticism from Nationalist Politicians or the Catholic Church. This issue was previously raised with religious figures including Bishop Eamon Martin, yet the Catholic Church, Six County Politicians and those who would frequently call for a more humane and compassionate prison regime seem content to ignore this emotive issue.
Compassion for important religious events especially family bereavements is something that should be the norm in any civilised society; sadly it is cynically withheld by the bigoted Maghaberry Jail Administration when it comes to Republican Political Prisoners.
Republican Political Prisoners
Roe 4
Maghaberry
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