Seriously ill republican prisoner Brendan Lillis has been transferred from jail to a hospital in Belfast.
Lillis was moved to Belfast's City Hospital last week after a doctor in Maghaberry Prison recommended he be assessed in an outside medical center.
Lillis, from the Falls Road in Belfast, has spent the past 600 days in bed at the County Antrim prison's hospital wing, where he is suffering from the debilitating condition ankylosing spondylitis, a chronic, inflammatory arthritis that mainly affects joints in the spine and can cause eventual fusion of the spine.
The 59-year-old was jailed for possessing explosives in the 1970s, served 17 years and was released in the mid-1990s on license which was revoked in late 2009 when he faced new charges.
Earlier this year, it was decided that Lillis was too ill to stand trial. His family and friends have been fighting for his release and even took part in a three-day hunger strike to show their opposition to the North's justice minister David Ford's refusal to release the ill man who now weighs just 70 pounds.
Lillis's partner, Roisin Lynch, says she feels "vindicated" following the move.
"I've been calling for this for a long time, thank God it's taking place but it really went down to the wire," she told the Irish Echo.
"I feel vindicated because I always said the treatment he was getting in the prison hospital was inadequate, but Mr. Ford argued against me. So many times I wondered were they looking at the same fella I was looking at, when they were making this decision."
With Lillis having recently been diagnosed with anorexia nervosa to add to his primary illness, Lynch says she doesn't feel confident about her partner's ability to be rehabilitated.
"I just hope now it's not too late," she said. "It's certainly too late to get him back to full health, but I can see it will be a battle to get his body to tolerate any food, and that worries me," she said.
