Joe Rice said that Micheal McAleavey, from West Belfast, was being held in "inhuman conditions" in Mountjoy Prison and should be immediately transferred to a jail across the border.

McAleavey, known as the 'forgotten man', has spent the past 25 years in jail, becoming one of the Republic's longestserving prisoners.

He was jailed 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.

McAleavey's solicitor, Joe Rice, said: "My client wants to be transferred to a prison in the North to be near his two sisters and his elderly father, who is too sick to make the journey to Dublin to visit him.

He meets all the criteria for transfer. He has served a lengthy sentence already and been a model prisoner. He accepts moral culpability for what he did. All his psychiatric reports have been positive as, we're told, are all his probation reports."

Last November, British government security minister at Stormont Paul Goggins approved McAleavey's repatriation and the Northern Ireland prison service wrote to Dublin to begin the transfer process.

For the past six months, McAleavey's legal team have been told the matter is being considered by the authorities in the Republic. In January, they were assured a decision would be made in "two or three weeks". Last week they were informed that papers dealing with his repatriation, received by the Department of Justice from the Department of Defence on 7 June, were forwarded to the attorney general's office a fortnight ago for urgent legal advice.

"There is just endless bureaucracy and no matter what we do, no decision is made, " said Rice. "Any decision would be better than no decision because at the moment we're in limbo. At least if Micheal's repatriation was refused, we could seek a judicial review."

Rice said his "client's life" lay in the hands of the Dublin authorities. He pointed out that Michael O'Neill, one of the killers of garda Jerry McCabe, had recently been released from jail after serving eight years of an 11-year-sentence. The other three men convicted in the case are likely to be released within the next two years.

Rice said, "My client has already served a sentence three times longer than any of these men. There is no consistency here. All he is asking is to be moved close to his family in Belfast. His father is 77 years old. He has serious heart problems. Micheal hasn't seen him in 13 years. Rules in the prison system must be applied compassionately and fairly. All prisoners must be treated with equality."