SAOIRSE32

Irish Times

19/11/2007

The police investigation into the murder of loyalist terror boss Jim Gray has come to a dead end, it was revealed today.

The flamboyant former brigadier of the UDA’s east Belfast brigade had been warned by police he was under threat shortly before he was gunned down outside his father’s home in October 2005, the inquest was told.

Gray, known as Doris Day for his colourful sense of fashion was on bail facing money laundering charges when he was killed.

Seven months before the murder he was thrown out of the UDA and there was intense speculation he was silenced by former associates to prevent him revealing the inner workings of the paramilitary organisation at his trial.

Detective Inspector Deborah McMaster told the inquest she believed those responsible for the murder to be members of the UDA. However she said despite a number of arrests no one had been charged.

“The inquiry has more or less come to a dead end,” she said.

The inquest heard Gray had been shot twice in the body with a Magnum revolver causing massive internal haemorrhaging.

His father, James, told the inquest he did not know who was responsible for killing his son and that he had been unaware he was under threat.

But when coroner John Leckey asked him if he believed it was paramilitaries he responded: “Nobody else”.

The murdered man’s sister Elizabeth Gray said: “He was wary about callers to the house, but he didn’t say anything about a threat. He didn’t want to worry me or scare me.”

Mr Leckey said the murder was “carefully planned and ruthlessly executed”.

He described the victim as “a very well known and prominent member of the UDA in east Belfast.”

Gray was shot dead as associate, Gary Matthews, helped him unload dumbbells from a car in father’s driveway. Matthews was arrested at the scene on suspicion of involvement in the murder, but was released without charge.

He was called as a witness but failed to turn up. Mr Leckey called for extra powers for coroners to compel witnesses to attend.

In September, the Assets Recovery Agency successfully secured a High Court order seizing assets of stg£336,000 from Matthews. The agency said the money was profit from drug dealing, money laundering, intimidation, blackmail, false accounting and evasion of liability and revenue tax by Matthews and Gray.

News Letter

20 November 2007

A DUP MP will tomorrow name a senior Sinn Fein member he believes was a British agent involved in the murder of his cousin.

David Simpson MP has secured a slot in the timetable of the House of Commons to name the republican tomorrow evening at around 7pm in a debate on Northern Ireland policing.
As an MP Mr Simpson is able to use Parliamentary privilege to name the individual, which affords him complete protection from any possible legal action by the accused.
“There are serious questions that surround the individual concerned,” said Mr Simpson.
“Did they pass on all that they knew to the security forces or only a portion of it? Did they stand to one side and allow other terrorist operations to take place when they may have been able to
prevent them? Did their role as an informer protect them from any potential prosecutions?”
“These questions deserve answers. I hope that by bringing matters to the fore some answers may be forthcoming.”
The killing was that of Mr Simpson’s cousin, father-of-two Frederick ‘Eric’ Lutton, 40, a former RUC reservist shot dead on May 1, 1979, near Moy in Co Armagh.
The IRA claimed responsibility for killing the National Trust caretaker but no one has ever faced charges.
Earlier this year Mr Lutton’s moving recollections of the last Twelfth he spent with his father recently won a News Letter short story competition.
Two years ago Sinn Fein’s Denis Donaldson was exposed as a police agent and later shot dead in Donegal.
The unveiling of such a senior agent caused widespread paranoia among republicans and the subsequent killing infuriated unionists, who saw it as continued PIRA activity.

Monday, November 19, 2007

A friend of Paul Quinn, the Armagh man murdered in a suspected republican beating last month, has spoken of how he and his pal were lured to the shed where he met his death.

The dead man’s girlfriend has also spoken for the first time of witnessing Mr Quinn’s final moments as she accompanied him to hospital in an ambulance.

Brendan Nugent (21) told the Sunday Times that he and Paul, also 21, had been “spinning” around their home town of Cullyhanna in a car on the afternoon of Saturday, October 25, when he received a phonecall offering them work on a farmyard across the border in Co Monaghan.

“It was ‘come and clean up the yard, there’s cattle coming tomorrow’,” he said.

After arriving at the farm in Oram, he said: “We walked in, round the back and we were standing talking for a good five minutes.

“We were thinking the yard didn’t look that bad. I walked over beside a lorry. That’s when I seen the first fella. I said, ‘Paul, f…ing run!”

Mr Nugent then described how they were then surrounded by masked men.

“I knew they were looking for Paul,” he said. “I thought they’d give him a bit of a beating - a broken arm or something.”

Mr Nugent then described the attack on Mr Quinn: “They were beating him, you could hear the bars bouncing off him, maybe four or five bars, he was screaming.”

The paper reported that after the victim fell silent, the attack continued for some five minutes. When the beating ceased, Mr Nugent said his friend was “the picture of death” and wrapped a coat over him before ringing Paul’s girlfriend, Emma Murphy.

The 18-year-old told the Irish Mail on Sunday that seeing her boyfriend moments from death was “the hardest thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life.”

“He was more or less screaming with the pain, he was in a bad way,” she said. “I thought first that he had got bullet shots in his legs, but it was actually the bone sticking out of his knee. I thought he was just going to have broken arms, broken legs. He had bruises all over his face and his head and there was blood coming out of his arms and legs.”

BBC

A security alert at a shopping complex in Belfast city centre has been declared a hoax.

CastleCourt shopping centre was evacuated

Hundreds of people were forced to leave CastleCourt shopping centre on Monday afternoon due to a bomb scare.

At one stage, Royal Avenue was also cordoned off. The security alert is now over.

On Friday, there were traffic delays in the Boucher Road area of Belfast following a security alert. It also turned out to be a hoax device.

BBC

A meeting on policing in Belfast has had to be abandoned following republican protests.

The meeting of the south-Belfast sub-committee of the city’s district policing partnership was taking place in the Markets area of Belfast.

Chairman Pat McCarthy, of the SDLP, said about 20 republican protestors holding placards disrupted it.

“It was particularly targeted at myself and the two Sinn Fein councillors on the DPP,” he said.

“I’d asked the council officers who service the DPP committee what they thought and they told me that it was the worst protest, demonstration, they had ever witnessed and they were a bit apprehensive,” he said.

“Because of it I decided to call the meeting off.”

Mr McCarthy said that he was “jostled” before calling off the meeting.

The PSNI’s area commander Michele Larmour said she was “deeply disappointed” by the events.

“Being part of the DPP gives us the opportunity to answer questions and to address issues raised by residents from the local area,” she said.

“It is disappointing that we have been unable to do that this evening but we look forward to having the opportunity to do this again.”

Policing Board chairman Des Rea said everyone has the right to peaceful protest “but the behaviour displayed at tonight’s meeting was unacceptable”.

Sinn Fein Policing Board member Alex Maskey was in the audience.

“Some of them (the protesters), would have been former Sinn Fein supporters, some would never have supported Sinn Fein,” he said.

“This was as much a protest against us as a party engaging with policing as it was against the police.

“We have a mandate from people in the Markets to engage, but I feel it was a mistake to organise a meeting without talking to people in the local community.”

DPPs operate as sub-committees of local councils, advising on policing priorities and holding police commanders in their areas to account.

The partnerships fall under the auspices of the Policing Board, which holds the PSNI as a whole to account.

In January, Sinn Fein voted to back the PSNI for the first time, with party representatives taking their seats on the Policing Board for the first time in May.

4ni.co.uk

19 November 2007

A war of words has developed between UUP peer, Lord John Laird and the government over the brutal murder of Cullyhanna man, Paul Quinn.

The Secretary of State has dismissed “speculation” about responsibility for the murder even though a paramilitary watchdog linked the killing to the IRA.

In the House of Commons the Secretary of State Shaun Woodward first said that the Irish Justice Minister had assured him that there was “no information at this stage that the killing had been authorised or carried out by any paramilitary grouping”.

However, Lord Laird later highlighted the contradiction between Mr Woodward and the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) whose spokesman, John Grieve said he believed the killers had IRA connections.

“We do believe that those who were involved in the attack on him – in his brutal murder – included people who are members or former members or have associations with members or former members of the Provisional IRA,” Mr Grieve said.

A Northern Ireland Office spokeswoman, in response to Lord Laird, said: “We have no doubt that the IMC will make an assessment of responsibility for this murder in their next report.

“We do not, however, believe that speculative comments about responsibility are going to aid the police investigation or assist the prosecution of anyone brought to justice for this crime.”

But Lord Laird has since slammed Mr Woodward for “sleeping through the tea party”, adding: “The IMC, south Armagh residents and numerous commentators all believe PIRA was behind the murder of Paul Quinn.

“What is Mr Woodward saying? That 20 guys in total, eight or nine of them with surgical gloves, getaway cars and a getaway van were out for a walk on Saturday afternoon when they just decided to clip someone around the ear?”

Lord Laird has already named those he believed were responsible for the murder in the House of Lords under parliamentary privilege.