Description
"Lee Clegg, a paratrooper with the British Army, was released from prison on the orders of Patrick Mayhew, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Clegg had received a life sentence and been imprisoned in June 1993 for the murder of Karen Reilly (18), a Catholic civilian, on 30 September 1990. The decision to release Clegg sparked serious rioting in Nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. [Rioting continued for a second night. Clegg was accepted back into the British Army and later promoted.] Sinn Féin (SF) and representatives of Loyalist paramilitaries called for the immediate release of all political prisoners. Breidge Gadd, then Chief Probation Officer for Northern Ireland, resigned from the Life Sentence Review Board in protest at the decision. John Bruton, then Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister), said that he expected the British authorities to apply the same rules "to other similar prisoner cases"."
Source Information
Elliott, S., and W.D. Flackes, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory, 1968-1999 (Belfast, Blackstaff 1999)