Maze escapee to be deported from US this week

A Belfast man who escaped from the top-security Maze Prison in the North 26 years ago is expected to be deported from the US to the Republic later this week.

Fifty-six-year-old Pól Brennan escaped from the prison with 38 others in September 1983.

He made his way to the US, where he began a new life, got married and became a legal immigrant.

Mr Brennan was detained at a border checkpoint in Texas in January 2008 in relation to a lapsed work permit.

He had applied for a new permit, but a judge ordered his deportation last November and a recent appeal to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was unsuccessful.

Brennan had argued that his deportation would cause "extreme hardship" to his US wife.