 Eleven days after the escape he appeared in public at the Wolfe Tone commemoration in Bodenstown, County Kildare, where troops from the Irish Army and the Garda's Special Branch attempted to arrest him, but failed after the crowd threw missiles and lay down in the road blocking access.He was arrested in January 1982 along with Angelo Fusco, and sentenced to ten years imprisonment for the escape under extra-jurisdictional legislation.Shortly before his release from prison in 1989 Magee was served with an extradition warrant, and he started a legal battle to avoid being returned to Northern Ireland.