Page "Brighton hotel bombing" Paragraph 12

Patrick Magee was tailed for months by MI5 and special branch, and finally arrested in an IRA flat in Glasgow.

Despite days of interrogation he refused to answer questions-but a fingerprint on a registration card recovered from the hotel ruins was enough to convict him.

While he admits he was part of the team that carried out the bombing, he still does not accept the fingerprint on the registration card was his.

" If that was my fingerprint I did not put it there ," In September 1986, Magee, then aged 35, was found guilty of planting the bomb, detonating it, and of five counts of murder.

Magee received eight life sentences: seven for offences relating to the Brighton bombing, and the eighth for a separate bombing conspiracy.

The judge recommended that he serve a minimum term of thirty-five years.

Later Home Secretary Michael Howard increased this minimum to " whole life ".

He was released from prison, however, in 1999, having served only fourteen years ( including the time before his sentencing ), under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

A Downing Street spokesman said that his release " was hard to stomach " and an appeal by then Home Secretary Jack Straw to prevent it was turned down by the Northern Ireland High Court.