Bernadette McAliskey
Bernadette McAliskey, the former MP and radical Northern Ireland activist, told a court on 23 October that she could never see her daughter Roisin allowing herself to be extradited to Germany to stand trial for an alleged IRA attack on a British Army base in 1996.
She said her daughter still suffered from the trauma of being in the family home at Coalisland, County Tyrone, during an assassination attempt by loyalist paramilitary gunmen in 1981. "If she is forcibly taken there she will not cooperate. She will roll up in a ball and die and I can't stop her doing that." Bernadette McAliskey was opposing an application by the German authorities for the extradition of her daughter on explosive charges. Leading English civil rights lawyer Gareth Peirce, who appeared for Roisin McAliskey six years ago, said inquiries had established that Ms McAliskey could not have been in Germany at the time of the IRA attack.