Fifty-eight life sentence prisoners convicted of "terrorist-related offences" have been released on licence from the North's prisons since August 1994, the Northern Ireland Prison Service said yesterday. It said a further four prisoners are expected to be released by the end of this year.
Both loyalist and republican spokesmen on prisons said, however, that the moves did not represent an adequate response to the 1994 ceasefires, and complained that life sentence prisoners had not benefited from the increase in remission of sentences from 30 per cent to 50 per cent last year.