BY CATHLEEN GUTEKANST
SAN FRANCISCO - On October 27, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a U.S. District Court ruling that Kevin Artt, Pól Brennan, and Terrence Kirby are denied bail while they appeal an August 11 ruling ordering their extradition to Northern Ireland.

The Irish activists, part of the "H-Block 4," remain in jail. Brennan and Kirby are currently being held in opposite wings of the Federal Detention Center in Pleasanton, California, while Artt has been transferred to the North Oakland Jail.

The three men, along with Jimmy Smyth, who was extradited to Northern Ireland a year ago, are Irish political prisoners who escaped from the H-Blocks of Long Kesh Prison outside of Belfast in 1983. Each had lived in California for a decade before their arrests by the FBI in 1992. None of them has received credit toward their UK sentences for the four or five years of jail time that they have served in the United States.

John Fogarty, regional vice-president for Human Rights of the Irish-American Unity Conference (IAUC), stated, "The prison authorities have considerably stepped up the level of harassment of these men. Pól Brennan has been placed in solitary confinement three times, twice for refusing to do prison work. He refused because he's never been convicted of any crime in U.S. court. Terry Kirby has received his mail in tatters, with pictures from his three-year-old daughter torn up.

"They transferred Kevin Artt to North Oakland Jail," Fogarty continued. "Kevin has been denied medical and dental care. He has been in custody since August and has been having difficulty eating because his teeth are falling out. I understand that he's lost quite a bit of weight."

H.B. O'Keady, president of the East Bay chapter of the IAUC., added, "Legal material sent to Terry Kirby for his defense, which he was to review and pass on to his lawyer, was never delivered to him and was returned `refused.' Other personal mail has also been returned for no apparent reason. The prison guards are harassing Terry and Pól. Guards have said to them `We're going to send you home in a box. You're nothing but a terrorist.' " O'Keady stated that there will be a demonstration to protest the denial of bail and continued harassment of the men, tentatively set for Sunday, December 14, near the Federal Detention Center.

In the Irish Republic, another 1983 Long Kesh escapee, Tony Kelly, was arrested at his home in Letterkenny, County Donegal, on October 22.

Kelly, 36, had been living openly in Donegal with his wife and two children since 1993. He had been sentenced to Long Kesh at the age of 17 with no release date at the "Secretary of State's pleasure."

Martin McGuinness, a leader of the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, stated, "The arrest of Tony Kelly is designed to undermine the peace process. The British government should immediately withdraw the extradition warrant."

In the past, Dublin courts refused to return two other H- Block escapees, Dermot Finucane and Jim Clark, to Northern Ireland. In March 1990, the Supreme Court in Dublin ordered the release of the two men, asserting the right to immunity from extradition for political, not criminal, prisoners.

The court also ruled that, in the face of evidence of brutality in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh and the failure of the British authorities to take any action against those responsible for torturing republican prisoners, the safety of Finucane and Clark could not be guaranteed.  
 
 
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