Escapee Seeks to Clear Name : Fugitive: Arrested nine years after breaking out of a Northern Ireland prison, convicted killer says he wants to stay in the U.S.

SAN DIEGO —  On a foggy June morning, the man a London tabloid once described as “Britain’s most wanted man” got a phone call on his 32-foot houseboat. It was the police.

There was something wrong with his car, out in the parking lot nearby, they said. Could he please come check? Officers were waiting.

After nine years on the run, in a journey that took Kevin Barry John Artt across the ocean and into a secret life in a new land, the law was waiting. But he was unsuspecting.

“I loved that car,” Artt said recently of the white 1980 Toyota Celica convertible, a symbol of the new identity he had created for himself in California. “It was my baby.”

In San Diego, no one knew his real name or that he had been convicted of the murder of a prison warden and labeled an Irish Republican Army terrorist. No one knew he had escaped from Northern Ireland’s most notorious prison in a famed jailbreak. In California, he was Kevin Thomas Keohane, savvy car salesman, sharp dresser and proud father of a little girl.

“I can’t honestly say I felt relieved at being arrested,” Artt, 34, said recently in a two-hour jail interview. “But I do now feel relieved. I can be myself again. I’ve been running from this for a long time.”

He added, “I want to prove my innocence. I want to stay here in the United States. I don’t want to be returned to Northern Ireland or the United Kingdom. I want to continue my life here. I was wrongly convicted of a murder I did not commit. What I’m really guilty of is being Catholic in Northern Ireland.”

Artt said he was beaten by British authorities and coerced into signing a bogus confession, then convicted of murder. He said he is no terrorist. A 1987 article in the Sun, the tabloid that labeled him “most wanted,” was “absolutely ridiculous,” he said.

Artt said he is an IRA sympathizer but does not formally belong to the IRA and has never committed violence in its name. The underground IRA is trying to oust British troops from Northern Ireland, which remains a part of Great Britain. The Catholic minority in Northern Ireland has long chafed under Protestant rule.

Artt said that if he is sent home he is certain to die at the hands of authorities eager to avenge the Nov. 26, 1978, killing of Albert Miles, deputy warden of Belfast’s infamous Maze, the main prison for hundreds of convicted IRA activists. Artt was serving a life sentence for Miles’ murder when he escaped from Maze with 37 other men in 1983.

British authorities have demanded Artt’s extradition. First, though, Artt faces charges in U.S. District Court in San Francisco of passport fraud, a charge that could bring up to five years in U.S. prison.

Artt said, “I’m as far from being a terrorist as any human being can be. I’m a total pacifist. Art, poems--I’m into total awareness, love, peace and equality.”

That’s what makes Southern California so wonderful, he said. In San Diego, where he migrated in 1986, no one cared about his religion or his background.

“He was a very personable fellow,” said a friend who knew Artt in San Diego. “The person we saw here was not the same guy they attribute all these (crimes) to.”

The money he made enabled Artt to rejoice in American materialism. “Furniture, clothes, a motorcycle, boats, toys--that was me,” Artt said.

He fell in love with a pretty 19-year-old, Jill Janssen. They never married but had a girl, now 4. “My very beautiful daughter,” is how Artt describes the preschooler.

The family of three moved from La Mesa to Carlsbad. “Kevin is a very gentle man,” Janssen said. “I’ve heard ‘IRA terrorist’ so many times that at this point, I think I’ll scream. Nobody knows Kevin the way I know Kevin and there is a character about him that is genuine and real. He’s into peace.”

Janssen, 24, said she separated from Artt two years ago but still talks to him virtually every day. “It’s important to me that people know I’ve taken up his cause because I’ve decided Kevin is worth it,” she said, adding, “I know he did not murder Albert Miles. Kevin never lied about things of importance.”

Miles was shot and killed in November, 1978, at his Belfast home. A week later, Artt was arrested, detained and interrogated. Artt said he knew nothing about the crime.

“They beat me, verbally assaulted me, degraded me, called me every name,” Artt said. “They hit me about the head.” After a week, he was released.

Three years later, Artt was again arrested. He was held in isolation, he said, denied a lawyer and questioned day and night by detectives who screamed at him. Again, Artt said, he was beaten about the head.

After a few days, another man was brought in and named Artt as his accomplice in the killing, an accusation that was later retracted. Artt denied the charge. But detectives told him his only chance of ever being released was to sign a confession.

If he confessed, detectives told him, he would be eligible for parole in six or seven years. If he didn’t, he was going to prison for 30 years. So, Artt said, he signed.

Two years later, Artt was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He disputed the confession but was unable to convince the judge it was the product of abuse.

“I prayed to St. Jude, the saint of hopeless causes,” Artt said. “I prayed for an escape. Little did I know what was in store. A miracle.”

Two weeks after being moved to the Maze prison, Artt joined inmates in a massive jailbreak. About a dozen of the 38 men who escaped that day remain at large, authorities said.

U.S. authorities zeroed in on Artt after matching his fingerprints when he applied for a California license to sell cars, according to legal papers filed by prosecutors.

At an Oct. 6 hearing in San Francisco before U.S. District Judge Charles Legge, Artt outlined his defense, saying that he broke out of prison, fled and falsified a U.S. passport to save his life.

It will be up to Legge to decide whether to allow Artt to make the argument at trial. Prosecutors say Artt’s so-called necessity defense has no legal merit. Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark Zanides called it “bunk,” saying that Artt was required under U.S. law to turn himself in once on American soil, and to count on U.S. authorities to protect his rights.

Defense attorneys take a broader view, saying that Artt was convicted improperly.

U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy II (D-Mass.), who has taken an interest in the case, issued a statement in September that Artt--along with a second man who took part in the 1983 escape and was arrested in the United States this year--are entitled to full protection under U.S. laws.

And last Friday, a lawyer in a similar case filed a letter in federal court from then-candidate Bill Clinton promising Irish-Americans a new approach to political asylum cases.

“We will work to ensure that political considerations do not hinder the workings of our courts in asylum cases,” Clinton wrote Oct. 23 to Rep. Bruce Morrison (D-N.Y.), chairman of Irish-Americans for Clinton-Gore. It did not refer to any specific cases.

In October, sitting in a cinder-block room at an Alameda County jail in the community of Dublin--a facility east of Oakland that houses federal inmates--Artt said he finds a humorous irony in his situation.

“I’m sitting in a jail in a town called Dublin,” he said. “I guess (prosecutors) have a sense of humor.”

“But,” he said, “this is very serious. I firmly believe that if I’m given a fair hearing, there’s no way on earth they’ll send me back.”