Micheal McAleavey, from west Belfast, claims he is being held in inhuman conditions and has asked to be transferred to a prison across the border.

His solicitor, Joe Rice, told the Sunday Tribune that his client's request had just been approved by the North's prisons' minister, Paul Goggins.

The prison service would now be writing to the Department of Justice in Dublin for their approval, Rice said.

"Essentially, the matter is now in the hands of the Irish authorities.

"I hope they will act speedily and repatriate my client to the North where he belongs, beside his family. There is no reason for anybody to procrastinate. The Republic supports, under European law, the repatriation of Irish political prisoners in English jails.

"Micheal McAleavey should be treated no differently. He meets all the criteria. He has served a lengthy sentence already and has been a model prisoner. He accepts moral culpability for what he did."

McAleavey was jailed for life for the murder of Corporal Gregory Morrow, Private Peter Burke and Private Thomas Murphy on UN peacekeeping duty in 1982.

An argument had erupted, with McAleavey complaining that Jews were waved through checkpoints, while Arabs were stopped and searched.

In an interview in Mountjoy with the Sunday Tribune in September, he said: "I've had 25 years of playing it over and over in my headf I did what I'd been trained to do, to kill efficiently and without mercy."

As one of the Republic's longest-serving prisoners, McAleavey is known in Mountjoy as 'the forgotten man'.

If his repatriation request is rejected in the Republic, Rice will seek a judicial review.