A 29-year-old man has been extradited from the north to the USA to stand trial for murder following a seven-year legal battle.
Jonah Horne is facing a charge of second degree murder over the fatal shooting of a 25-year-old man in Boca Raton, Florida, in June 2016.
He is one of two men accused of the killing of Jacob Walsh, of the town of Jupiter in Florida.
Matthew Lewis (30) of Jensen Beach, has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and his sentencing has been deferred by a Florida court to an unspecified date.
It is alleged Mr Walsh was shot during a drug deal.
Horne, who is from Florida’s Palm Beach Gardens area, was arrested in Lisburn in 2017 and has been in custody at Maghaberry Prison since.
He had appealed against his extradition, with lawyers arguing it would breach Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
In 2021, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg imposed an interim stay on extradition.
Horne’s final appeal was dismissed at the court earlier this month, with the claim he would be exposed to the real risk of life imprisonment without parole if convicted rejected.
The PSNI said on Thursday members of its International Policing Unit “working in partnership with US authorities and the US Marshall Service, have today extradited a 29-year-old man to the United States of America from Northern Ireland”.
