The World - News from June 14, 1988

A court in Ireland rejected a British request for the extradition of guerrilla bombing suspect Patrick McVeigh, 37. In the first test of extradition rules that Britain and the Irish Republic agreed to last month, the district court ruled that McVeigh’s identity had not been properly established in the warrants and ordered him freed. McVeigh, an Irish Republican Army suspect from Belfast, was met by a cheering crowd outside the court. He is accused of involvement in bomb attacks from 1981 to 1983 that killed two people outside London’s Chelsea Barracks and a bomb-disposal expert on Oxford Street. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was “utterly dismayed” by the court’s ruling, a senior aide said.