It's not a crime to fall in love with an IRA man

As Roisin McAliskey waited in jail to have her baby, the evidence backing Germany's request for her extradition was losing credibility

On Monday last week a 5lb 13oz baby was born in the Whittington Hospital in north London. Her parents called her Loinnir, an Irish name which means a ray of light that comes from behind dark clouds.

Loinnir's birth was a political event. She is the daughter of Roisin McAliskey, who is facing extradition to Germany for questioning about the IRA bombing of the Osnabruck military base on 28 June 1996. Roisin, in turn, is the daughter of Bernadette Devlin, a fierce critic of Britain's involvement in Northern Ireland who became the UK's youngest MP in 1969, and left an indelible imprint on parliamentary life by punching the Home Secretary Reginald Maudling as he defended the actions of British troops on Bloody Sunday.

The circumstances surrounding Loinnir's birth are by now familiar. Her mother, a 25-year-old politics graduate, was arrested last November at her home in Coalisland, Ulster, and taken to the Castlereagh interrogation centre in Belfast. From there she was flown to London to face extradition proceedings to Germany over the Osnabruck bombing. She was three months pregnant, but bail was refused and she has spent the past six months as a Category A prisoner in Holloway jail, north London.

Initially McAliskey was denied exercise rights and proper medical care despite suffering acute asthma, stomach ulcers and complications with her first pregnancy. Only when she became a cause celebre was medical care improved, exercise permitted and an assurance given that she need not be chained to a guard during labour.

Ten days ago, her supporters received a taped phone call from a fellow prisoner in Holloway saying that McAliskey had collapsed. She was bailed by the High Court to the Whittington to give birth. Four days later Loinnir was born, late and underweight, the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck eight times. On behalf of her daughter, Bernadette McAliskey thanked the hospital for its expertise and humanity in handling the birth.

TOMORROW, McAliskey's lawyer, Gareth Pierce, will again raise the question of bail in the High Court with clear concerns about the baby's future health and safety. The likelihood, however, is that mother and child will be back inside Holloway by tomorrow night.

But what have been lost completely among endless reports of bail and extradition hearings are the reasons why she was sent to Holloway in the first place: the significant detail of the case of the Federal Republic of Germany v Roisin McAliskey.

McAliskey cannot defend herself against the allegations made in court because of the nature of the European extradition treaty which means evidence is not heard here, but kept for the potential hearing in the country of extradition. The evidence on which the warrant has been drawn up has been refused to McAliskey's lawyers, who have recently had to instruct a German lawyer, Elke Nils, to inspect the files on their behalf. Her supporters, however, have pieced together four vital strands of evidence which suggest that the case against McAliskey is fundamentally flawed.

1. The evidence of Manfred Schmidt: Within hours of the mortar bomb attack on the Quebec barracks at the Osnabruck British army base, the German police received information that five Irish men and women had been staying at a holiday cottage in the village of Hatten 60 miles north of Osnabruck between 15-29 June last year.

Manfred Schmidt and his wife, the landlords, said the property had been rented by a man calling himself Michael Dickson and a woman known as "Beth". A man called Mark and another couple had been staying with them. The police produced photofit pictures of Beth and Dickson which were carried both by the media and on the Internet. The next day the IRA claimed responsibility for the attack, in which one mortar bomb had exploded causing minor damage and two more had failed to explode. No one was killed or injured.

Five months later, after looking at photographs supplied by the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Belfast, the German authorities claim that Mr Schmidt positively identified Roisin McAliskey as Beth. The extradition warrant clearly states that: "The witness Schmidt, who had seen the defendants several times definitely recognised on photographs the defendant McAliskey."

But when a German television journalist went to interview Mr Schmidt in March this year, he appeared surprised that he had become the chief witness on McAliskey's warrant. He denied on tape that he had ever identified McAliskey as Beth.

Papers seen by the German lawyer show that Mrs Schmidt, who had more contact with the Irish tenants than her husband, did not identify McAliskey as Beth when shown pictures of her. They further reveal that Mr Schmidt at first identified someone else entirely and that when he was shown pictures of McAliskey he said she did not look like Beth, but that she had a "shy look" like her.

2. Fingerprint evidence: The arrest warrant claims that "two fingerprints of defendant McAliskey have been secured on snippets of wrapping foil which had been left behind by the tenants". Since it was issued, the German authorities have twice changed their information regarding the fingerprints. First it was claimed that the "wrapping foil" was not found in the holiday cottage, but over 60 miles away from Hatten, near one of the lorries allegedly left behind by the IRA unit. Most recently, the German prosecutor has claimed that the foil was found in a rubbish bag outside the holiday cottage. Despite requests by McAliskey's lawyers, the fingerprint evidence has never been sent to Britain to allow for analysis by an independent expert.

3. The car with the broken tail-light: At the same time he had helped to produce the photofit pictures of the alleged terrorists, the German authorities claim that Mr Schmidt identified a white Rover with British registration plates used by the group, which had a broken tail-light. Enquiries in Ireland produced evidence suggesting that a car had arrived on 1 July on the overnight ferry from the French port of Roscoff, 900 miles from Hatten. By 3 July, the RUC had found the car abandoned 200 miles north in Northern Ireland, on the Craigavon Estate, Portadown.

The German warrant states: "The passenger car used, type Rover saloon, was noticed at the occasion of a customs check in Cork, Republic of Ireland, on 1 July 1996. The defendant Dickson had been the driver of the car which had been taken by ferry from Roscoff, France."

No crossing was made from Roscoff to Cork on 30 June by any of the ferry companies operating the route. Moreover, papers seen by the German lawyer show that Schmidt was unclear whether the car he saw was actually white or red.

4. The handwriting on a scrap of paper: Finally, as Mr Schmidt's credibility as the key witness on the extradition warrant began to fall apart, a new piece of evidence was referred to by the German embassy in correspondence with McAliskey's supporters. Handwriting experts in Germany had apparently identified writing on a scrap of paper given to the Schmidts' daughter as belonging to McAliskey. It is claimed that Beth wrote a fictitious address so the two could become pen-pals.

But the report, seen by the German lawyer, states that, because the address is written in block capitals it is impossible to attribute it to one particular person. McAliskey could be neither ruled in or ruled out using this latest piece of evidence.

ROISIN McAliskey's defence lawyers have no forum in which they can offer their evidence, which may, of course, include an alibi. Her constant problem has been her identity and her place of birth. As a child she was faced with the barrel of a Loyalist's gun as her mother and father, Bernadette Devlin and Michael McAliskey, were shot and left for dead in the next room. Devlin's fiery performance in the House of Commons in 1972, was followed by years of speaking out on Irish civil rights issues.

Then there is the picture, frequently used in British newspapers, which shows Roisin, her mother and the Sinn Fein MP Martin McGuinness carrying the coffin of INLA bomber Dominic "Mad Dog" McGlinchey at his funeral in 1994.

Her partner, and the father of Loinnir, is Sean McCotter, who served a jail sentence for IRA-related activities. Meanwhile, his brothers, Liam and Patrick McCotter have both been convicted of similar offences and his uncle, Seamus Twomey, was formerly the IRA's chief of staff.

In many people's minds, this is the real evidence against Roisin McAliskey. But none of these facts make her an IRA bomber. It is not a crime in either British or German law to fall in love with a member of the IRA, or to have his child. A case depends on the evidence, and in this one, where the evidence is riddled with inaccuracies and half-truths, it must be questioned whether there is really enough to keep a 25-year-old mother and her baby behind bars.