Stormont Justice Minister Naomi Long has said she wants to personally apologise to the family of Karol Kelly whose murderer remains on the run.
Ms Long said she has ordered a review to probe the sequence of events which saw Gary Anderson granted temporary release to attend his father’s funeral and then fail to return to prison.
Anderson absconded last Monday after being granted temporary release from Maghaberry Prison to attend his father’s funeral in Londonderry.
A police hunt remains ongoing, and An Garda Síochána in the Irish Republic have also been involved due to the proximity of where he disappeared to the border.
The public have been advised not to approach him.
The 29-year-old was sentenced in 2023 to 15 years for the murder of Karol Kelly in Derry.
Father-of-five, Mr Kelly died on Grafton Street in the city in the early hours of March 4 2018, after an altercation during which he was stabbed several times.
Anderson and his brother, Sean Anderson, were found guilty of the killing.
Both prisoners had applications for temporary compassionate leave to attend their father’s funeral turned down by the prison authorities.
Those decisions were challenged in the courts and while the decision to refuse leave to Sean Anderson was upheld, the court ordered that Gary Anderson could be temporarily released with conditions attached.
On Monday Ms Long said she is “very unhappy” about what happened.
“I have now commissioned an independent review of how this was handled,” she told BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme.
Referring to a number of issues, including around communication, Ms Long said it is important that the review is independent, and undertaken by someone outside Northern Ireland Prison Service and her department.
“They can look at all of the information and hopefully come up with recommendations to ensure that we see no repetition,” she added.
Ms Long said Mr Kelly’s family have been “subject to trauma and distress as a result of Anderson’s release and escape”.
“They’re at the forefront of my mind, and if they are willing I want to meet with them personally to apologise, I think that is the least as minister that I owe them,” she said.
“There is also the wider issue of public safety which has been compromised by his escape, and whilst no decision is responsible for his behaviour, it contributed to it and that causes me real concern.”
She added she still had full confidence in the prison system operation at Maghaberry.
“I am obviously like everyone else questioning the decision made in this case, and the various stages leading up to it, but that doesn’t shake my confidence in the Prison Service,” she said.
“There is a huge amount of very difficult and very dangerous work that goes on behind the walls of our prisons every day, people are having to, in live time, risk assess every prisoner and situation in order to keep themselves and the public safe, and to keep our prisons safe. That is a really tough job to do and particularly at the moment in Maghaberry where we are at capacity and indeed we are really under pressure in terms of the work that has to be done.
“One incident cannot shake our confidence in an entire system, but I want to do the independent review of this because I want to restore public confidence in the system.”
