A FORMER loyalist paramilitary chief who admitted five murders could be freed before an appeal against his six-and-a-half-year prison term is heard, his lawyer predicted today.
The Public Prosecution Service (PPS) is challenging the sentence handed down to UVF boss turned state informer Gary Haggarty on the basis that it was unduly lenient.
A planned hearing at the Court of Appeal in Belfast was adjourned at the last minute due to an "administrative matter".
Senior judges adjourned the case for a week, when they will sit again to review the situation.
But outside court 46-year-old Haggarty's solicitor revealed Sentence Review Commissioners have already met to consider his release and are due to give their preliminary decision within days.
Ciaran Shiels said: "If they order his release without challenge from the Northern Ireland Office it's likely that he would be released before the hearing of the PPS reference."
"In correspondence they have already indicated they do not require the judgment of the Court of Appeal ... to effect Gary Haggarty's release."
Haggarty, who was part of a UVF unit operating in north Belfast, was jailed earlier this year after confessing to hundreds of terrorist offences.
His catalogue of paramilitary crime extended over 16 years, from 1991 to 2007, and included five murders.
He also admitted five attempted murders, conspiracy to murder and directing terrorism and membership of a proscribed organisation charges.
Haggarty pleaded guilty as part of a deal that offered a reduced sentence, from 35 years in return for providing evidence and assisting police.
Under the terms of the agreement signed back in 2010 he supplied information on scores of loyalist killings and attempted murders.
But only one man is to be prosecuted over a murder using his evidence.
Now the PPS is seeking to have his sentence reviewed and increased - a move defence lawyers believe is academic.
Even if the appeal succeeds Haggarty will not serve any longer behind bars because the murders were committed before the Good Friday Agreement, they contend.
Under the terms of that peace deal the maximum prison term for a terrorist offence committed before April 1998 is two years in prison.
