Angelo Fusco

Angelo Fusco (born 2 September 1956) is a former volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who escaped during his 1981 trial for killing Grenadier Guards officer Herbert Westmacott in 1980.

Background and IRA activity Fusco was born in west Belfast in 1956, to a family with an Italian background who owned a fish and chip shop. On 9 April 1980 the unit lured the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) into an ambush on Stewartstown Road, killing one constable and wounding two others. On 2 May the unit were planning another attack and had taken over a house on Antrim Road, when an eight-man patrol from the SAS arrived in plain clothes, after being alerted by the RUC. As the SAS members at the front of the house exited the car the IRA unit opened fire with the M60 machine gun from an upstairs window, hitting Captain Herbert Westmacott in the head and shoulder. Westmacott was killed instantly, and is the highest-ranking member of the SAS killed in Northern Ireland. The remaining SAS members, armed with Colt Commando automatic rifles, submachine guns and Browning pistols, returned fire but were forced to withdraw. More members of the security forces were deployed to the scene, and after a brief siege the remaining members of the IRA unit surrendered. On 10 June Fusco and seven other prisoners, including Joe Doherty and the other members of the IRA unit, took a prison officer hostage at gunpoint in Crumlin Road Jail. After locking the officer in a cell, the eight took other officers and visiting solicitors hostage, also locking them in cells after taking their clothing.

Imprisonment and extradition battle Fusco escaped across the border into the Republic of Ireland before being arrested in January 1982, and was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for the escape and firearms offences under extra-jurisdictional legislation. A further three years were added to his sentence in 1986 after he attempted to escape from Portlaoise Prison, and he was released in January 1992. The arrest and abortive return of Fusco undermined the Northern Ireland peace process, with Unionist politicians including Ken Maginnis criticising the extradition being halted.

Fusco was freed on bail on 21 March pending the outcome of his legal challenge, and in November 2000 the Irish government informed the High Court that it was no longer seeking to return him to Northern Ireland. This followed a statement from Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Mandelson saying that "it is clearly anomalous to pursue the extradition of people who appear to qualify for early release under the Good Friday Agreement scheme, and who would, on making a successful application to the Sentence Review Commissioners, have little if any of their original prison sentence to serve".