Killer to learn of legal challenge

The three men are detained in Carstairs

A Northern Ireland man who murdered a young boy may find out on Wednesday if a legal challenge will result in his release from a high security Scottish hospital.

Brian Doherty and two other killers have mounted the challenge to the first legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament.

The three argue that the legislation, rushed through the parliament in September 1999 to remedy a legal loophole, is in breach of their human rights.

The case is being heard by the judicial committee of the Privy Council in London, in a hearing which was expected to last three days.

If the legal challenge succeeds, two of the three could be freed while the third could be transferred to a mainstream prison from Scotland's State Hospital at Carstairs in Lanarkshire.

Noel Ruddle: Won his freedom

Karl Anderson, formerly called Tonner, Alexander Reid, and Doherty claim that the Mental Health (Public Safety and Appeals) (Scotland) Act is unlawful and in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights,

The Act was rushed through the Scottish Parliament within months of devolution becoming a reality, after a legal loophole led to the release from Carstairs State Hospital of a man who killed a neighbour with a Kalashnikov rifle.

Noel Ruddle spent seven years in hospital after gunning down father-of-three James McConville on the doorstep of his home in Glasgow's Gorbals.

He was freed under the Mental Health Act after winning a ruling that his personality disorder could not be treated.

The emergency legislation was brought in to block the legal loophole to prevent the release of other dangerous "untreatables".

Emergency legislation

Reid, 49, was sent to the state hospital without limit of time as a teenager after he stabbed to death 22-year-old housewife Angela McCabe, who was the mother of a four-week-old baby, in her home in Bishopbriggs, Glasgow, in 1967.

Doherty, 26, from Strabane in County Tyrone, was originally sentenced to life in 1995 for the kidnap and killing of 11-year-old Kieran Hegarty.

And Anderson, 52, was sent to Carstairs without limit of time in 1968 after strangling 12-year-old Hazel Phin in a cellar in Dundee.

They claimed that the emergency legislation brought in by the Scottish Parliament was incompatible with Article 5 of the convention enshrining the right to liberty and the release of a detained person if they are not lawfully held.

All three men have been assessed as presenting a high risk of danger to the public if they were released into the community