Jailed former loyalist chief Mark Haddock has ended a legal challenge to being denied “repatriation” back to Northern Ireland.
Haddock, who allegedly headed a notorious UVF unit while operating as a police informer, is serving a sentence in England for a knife attack on an associate.
He issued judicial review proceedings against the Prison Service after being refused permission to complete the remainder of the term in Northern Ireland.
But the challenge was formally dismissed at the High Court on Wednesday amid indications that 55-year-old Haddock may be set to achieve his original objective.
His barrister said: “The matter is now resolved and is academic.”
In 2014 Haddock was jailed for 12 years at Woolwich Crown Court after being convicted of wounding with intent.
He stabbed one-time friend Terry Fairfield outside a pub in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire in January that year.
The victim needed 27 external and three internal stitches after being slashed to the side of the head.
Both men are from north Belfast, but had been living in England under new identities.
Haddock was ordered to serve at least eight years behind bars and another four on licence.
It remains unclear how much longer he is expected to spend in prison.
He is alleged to have once led an infamous UVF crew based in the Mount Vernon estate in north Belfast.
In 2007, former Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan’s report into that gang’s campaign of murder found evidence that members were working as special branch agents.
She also concluded that police had colluded with loyalists to protect them from arrest and prosecution.
In 2012, Haddock was among a dozen men acquitted at a major supergrass trial in Belfast of all charges linked to the paramilitary feud killing of rival UDA boss Tommy English.
Mr English was shot dead in front of his wife at his home on the Ballyduff estate in Newtownabbey on Halloween night 2000 as part of a violent loyalist feud.
No further details were disclosed in court today about the circumstances surrounding Haddock’s legal challenge.
Mr Justice Scoffield agreed to end proceedings on the terms suggested by his legal representatives.
“This is a repatriation case,” the judge said.
“I’m not going to inquire too much into the details of what has happened, but I’m happy to hear that the parties have managed to resolve it… and dismiss the application.”