Accused was pal of slain LVF boss
By Ciaran McGuian
31 July 2005
A MAN charged with an attempted murder in a Co Down cemetery was a close pal of slain LVF godfather Steven Warnock.
Robert Black (35), described by senior security sources as a “leading light” in the LVF, appeared in court last week, accused of abducting and shooting a man in an incident in Holywood in June.
However, career criminal Black’s violent, drug-dealing past was raised in an earlier court hearing, in which the gangster-busting Assets Recovery Agency seized around £200,000 from the estate of murdered LVF chief Warnock.
Warnock was gunned down in September 2002 while driving through Newtownards with his three-year-old daughter, in the back of his £30,000 BMW.
Judge Girvan painted Warnock as a drug-dealing paramilitary godfather and said: “He associated with Robert Black, a known and proven drug dealer with 103 convictions for various offences including the importation of drugs, possession with intent to supply, robbery, burglary, deception and crimes of violence.”
A senior security source told Sunday Life: “Black is one of the most violent and dangerous members of the LVF.
“When he was remanded in custody, it made it a lot easier for the UVF to go into the Garnerville estate and start putting people out.
“With him still there, it could have turned very messy.”
Black, who survived a UVF murder bid near a south Belfast primary school two months ago, was arrested last weekend by detectives investigating a brutal shooting in Co Down last month.
A 26-year-old man was lucky to be left alive after being blasted in the chest with a shotgun.
He had earlier been abducted by three men from a filling station on the Old Holywood Road and taken to the Redburn Cemetery.
Black, from Glenlea Park in Belfast, appeared in Ards Magistrate’s Court last Monday charged with attempted murder.
Another man, Jonathan Smyth (22), also from Glenlea Park, is also charged with the attempted murder, which Crown lawyers have linked to the ongoing feud between the rival UVF and LVF paramilitaries.
The charges were scheduled, and will be heard before a judge sitting without a jury if they proceed to the Crown Court.
