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A notorious paramilitary assassin who killed three people in a pistol and grenade attack after an IRA funeral has been released from prison.
Michael Stone’s release from Maghaberry Prison came after the families of his victims lost a legal challenge that was aimed at preventing him from requesting that his sentence be terminated prematurely.
The former member of the Ulster Defense Association was serving a 30-year term for the 1988 attack on Milltown Cemetery in West Belfast.
He had also been convicted of murdering a milkman, shooting a carpenter in the head and shooting another man up to 16 times with a machine gun.
Stone was released under the Good Friday Agreement in 2000, but returned to prison six years later for trying to kill Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness in Stormont.
In November, Northern Ireland’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, considered whether he should remain in jail until at least 2024, or whether his minimum fee expired in 2018 because it included the six years he was on leave on leave.
The court concluded that the period that Stone legally spent on the license should be included in the relevant part of his sentence.
In their ruling, the judges said that keeping Stone behind bars until 2024 “would constitute an interference with the inmate’s physical freedom and could only arise under the clear authority of the law.”
This overturned last year’s Superior Court order that said he would have to serve another five and a half years in prison before his release can be considered.
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