Former MP's daughter is bomb suspect

David McKittrick Ireland Correspondent

A daughter of the former nationalist MP Bernadette McAliskey is being sought by German police investigating an IRA mortar bomb attack on a British army base in Germany last summer.

The German authorities yesterday applied for the extradition of 25-year- old Roisin McAliskey in connection with the attack in Osnabruck last June. The German federal prosecutor said that Ms McAliskey faced charges of attempted murder and possession of explosives.

It emerged yesterday that she has been in the custody of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Belfast since last Wednesday, when she was arrested at her parents' home in Coalisland, Co Tyrone. The home was searched yesterday, but police sources said nothing had been found.

No one was injured in the Osnabruck attack, although several devices were fired into the base and one landed close to a fuel store. The German authorities later named two men, one of them from Northern Ireland and the other a former British soldier, whom they wished to question.

Bernadette McAliskey yesterday said that her daughter had never been to Germany and that neither her daughter nor her lawyer had been told of any extradition warrant: "Neither Roisin nor her lawyer have been presented with any information about the existence of the warrant," she said.

Mrs McAliskey came to prominence in the late Sixties when, as a student civil rights activist, she was elected to Westminster as the youngest- ever female MP. She made a huge public impact, being characterised variously as a "firebrand" and "a mini-skirted Castro".

Her chequered career since then included a short jail term for rioting, a physical attack on the late Reginald Maudling, the former Home Secretary, in the Commons following "Bloody Sunday", and the loss of her seat in 1974.

Two years ago, she carried the coffin and gave the oration at the funeral of Dominic McGlinchey, the murdered former leader of the Irish National Liberation Army.