Northern Ireland prison empties as killers go free in name of peace

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - By week's end, when most of the remaining inmates file out of Northern Ireland's anti-terrorist Maze prison, the murderers and bombers who made headlines and broke families' hearts during 30 years of sectarian strife will be free men.

The Irish Republican Army sniper who shot the last British soldier killed in Northern Ireland. The bomber who massacred nine people in a Protestant fish shop - and the Protestant who killed seven people in retaliation. The IRA man who bombed London's Docklands area, killing two.

All of them - a total of 86 prisoners - are to receive early paroles Friday, the final beneficiaries of one of the most divisive provisions of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace agreement.

That stipulation calls for the early release of prisoners affiliated with paramilitary groups observing cease-fires - 428 inmates in all, a third of them serving life sentences for murder.

With Friday's deadline looming, this week already has seen the freeing of pro-British Protestant paramilitary member Michael Stone, who killed three people by opening fire with two pistols and lobbing grenades at mourners attending an IRA funeral in 1988.

''At times - such as this week - you ... have to swallow hard on something like prisoner releases and recognize that while people's feelings will be hurt, you have to continue with what is necessary to ensure a permanent peace,'' said Peter Mandelson, Britain's senior official in Northern Ireland.

Still, he added, ''I do not pretend that I can even begin to comprehend the pain the victims and their families must feel at moments like these.''

At the height of ''the Troubles,'' the Maze prison housed 1,700 prisoners. Friday's mass release will reduce the population to just 16 inmates, ineligible for early parole because their paramilitary groups have not called truces.

Before too long, those men will finish their sentences or be transferred to one of Northern Ireland's other two prisons, leaving the Maze ''to be mothballed for contingency purposes,'' said prison service spokesman Mark McCaffrey.

Opened in 1976, the facility southwest of Belfast evolved into a most unusual penal institution, with various paramilitary organizations grouped in individual wings and given considerable latitude in running their fiefdoms.

''Nowhere on earth is there a prison like this - such a concentration of bombers, killers, terrorist tacticians under one roof,'' Adam Ingram, the British government's security minister, said after one visit.

It was street violence incited by inmate protests - including a 1981 hunger strike that ended with the deaths of Bobby Sands and nine IRA comrades - that nudged British authorities toward eventually loosening the prison's rules, despite the hardcore population.

Since 1994, cell doors have not been locked, and guards cannot search the segregated wings without giving a day's advance warning. Prisoners with 10 years under their belts get to go home at Christmas.

The early paroles began mere months after the striking of the peace accord, at all three Northern Ireland prisons. After Friday's completion, only slightly more Catholic prisoners will have gained release than Protestant inmates.

That still doesn't appease a number of Protestant politicians, who complain paramilitary groups on both sides of the divide are reaping the benefits of the peace agreement without being forced to give up their weaponry.

''They are being released onto the streets and are as armed to the teeth as they were before,'' said Ian Paisley Jr. of the Democratic Unionist Party, a hard-line party bitterly opposed to the accord.

Although the IRA has not turned over any of its weapons to an independent disarmament commission, the outlawed group agreed in May to allow two international observers to periodically inspect its hidden arms dumps.

That was enough for the British government to restore powers to Northern Ireland's fledgling Protestant-Catholic government, suspended due to a deadlock over the IRA's arsenal.

For many of the victims' relatives, it is hope for a lasting peace - buttressed by the local government's resumption - that allows them to come to grips with seeing those who killed their loved ones go free.

''I don't want to be bitter about this thing,'' said Roddy Hackett, whose brother, Dermot, was shot to death by Stone in a separate 1987 attack.

''The one thing that would annoy me is if peace didn't come and these people were allowed to walk about,'' Hackett said.

David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party said the completion of the early releases marks another turning point for the province, which has seen more than 3,300 people die in sectarian-related violence over the past three decades.

''There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who are alive that might be dead were it not for changing circumstances in Northern Ireland,'' said the Protestant politician, himself once imprisoned for possessing weaponry.

''Next week, for the first time in my lifetime, there will be no political prisoners in Northern Ireland,'' Ervine said. ''Now, that has got to be a watershed.''