Only one inmate remained in the North's top-security Maze Prison over Christmas. All the prisoners had been freed for Christmas parole and only a skeleton staff remained on duty in the Co Antrim jail.
However, Loyalist Volunteer Force inmate, Mark McGuickan (38), was returned to jail after he was brought before Cookstown Magistrates Court in Co Tyrone for breaking the conditions of his parole.
About 130 paramilitary inmates were freed from the jail last Friday. They were given 12 days to spend with their families before returning. The prisoners released were both sentenced and remand.
When they get back, none should have long to wait until they are freed permanently. Under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, they will be released by May provided their paramilitary organisations remain on ceasefire.
Those released last week included Provisional IRA, INLA, UDA, UVF and LVF inmates. Among those freed was Michael Stone, jailed for the 1989 gun and grenade attack which killed three mourners at a republican funeral in Milltown Cemetery, west Belfast; and Sean Kelly, the Provisional IRA bomber who killed nine people in a Shankill Road fish shop in 1993.
Also released were James McArdle, serving 25 years for the London Docklands bomb which ended the IRA ceasefire in 1996, and three men from south Armagh involved in the sniper killing of Lance-Bombardier Stephen Restorick.
Several paramilitary prisoners in Maghberry Prison, Co Antrim, were not released. They included Loyalist Volunteer Force inmate Mark Fulton and Oglaigh na hEireann prisoner Martin Duffy. The Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association has accused the British government of political discrimination for not releasing Duffy.