New move in killers' action

The three men want to be released from Carstairs

Three killers have begun a legal action which invokes the European Human Rights Convention in an attempt to secure their release from Scotland's high-security state hospital.

Alexander Reid and Karl Anderson - previously known as Tonner - want to be freed from Carstairs in Lanarkshire, while Brian Doherty is seeking to be put into the mainstream prison population.

Their lawyers have told three judges at the Court of Session in Edinburgh that emergency legislation brought in by the Scottish Parliament to close a loophole that led to the release of Noel Ruddle from Carstairs, is incompatible with the convention.

The Mental Health (Public Safety and Appeals) (Scotland) Act of 1999 was the first piece of legislation brought in by the new Scottish Parliament following an outcry over Ruddle.

Government opposition

The action now brought before Scotland's most senior judge, the Lord President, Lord Rodger, sitting with Lady Cosgrove and Lord Philip, could also secure Reid and Anderson an absolute discharge if it proves successful.

The government is opposing the move and maintains that Reid and Anderson, along with Doherty, should be kept in Carstairs and that their continued detention is lawful.

Reid, 49, was convicted of killing a woman in 1967 at her home in Bishopbriggs. He was ordered to be detained at Carstairs without limit of time.

The case is being heard at the Court of Session

In 1997 he secured a ruling from the Court of Session that he should be released because he was regarded as untreatable, despite a sheriff earlier warning that he posed a high-risk of re-offending.

The decision was overturned by the House of Lords after an appeal.

Anderson was also ordered to be detained without limit of time for strangling a 12-year-old girl in Dundee in 1968.

Doherty, 26, from Strabane, in Northern Ireland, was transferred to Carstairs from a prison after killing an 11-year-old boy. He attempted to set fire to the boy's private parts and buried him in a ditch.

Personality disorder

Simon Collins, junior counsel for Anderson and Reid, said that in Anderson's case, it was contended that he suffered from an untreatable personality disorder.

The Scottish Executive insists he has a severe personality disorder combined with paranoid schizophrenia and that the public needs protection from him.

The court heard that the three killers accepted that there was serious risk that their appeals for release would fail under the emergency legislation brought in by the parliament.

But they are now seeking to have the legislation declared unlawful by the court because it was outwith its "legislative competence".

Mr Collins said that debate on the provisions of the 1999 act had been "restricted" and the new law effectively provided for preventive detention of people who were not treatable.

It was argued that treatability of a mental condition was the essential basis for admission and lawful detention of a person in Carstairs.

The action before the three judges has been set down for three days of legal debate.