SAOIRSE32

Evening Echol
28/04/2008 - 11:29:51 PM

Fresh trouble broke out between rival nationalist and loyalist groups tonight.

For the second night running missiles were thrown by the rivals in the Mountpottinger and Albert Bridge areas in the east of Belfast.

Police warned motorists to steer clear of the area as both the extent of the violence and the numbers involved increased.

PSNI officers on the ground made contact with community representatives on both sides in a bid to stop the interfactional trouble.

Politicians on all sides condemned last night’s violence when missiles were thrown by rival groups in the same area.

Three police vehicles were damaged during the trouble in the Newtownards Road and Albert Bridge Road interface with the nationalist Short Strand area in east Belfast.

On that occasion police said peace was restored around 12.30am after community representatives intervened and a spokesman thanked them for their calming influence.

The trouble involved up to 60 youths at its height and continued intermittently for several hours forcing the closure of a number of roads.

The PSNI said they had not established what sparked the clash.

However, there had been an Orange Parade in the lower Newtownards Road area on Sunday morning. It passed off without incident but may have raised tensions in the interface area.

BBC
28 April 2008

The father of a UVF murder victim is to form a new victims’ group along with other relatives of people killed in NI.

Raymond McCord’s son, Raymond jnr, 22, was beaten to death in a north Belfast quarry in November 1997.

On Monday, the assembly debated the murder and alleged police collusion with the loyalists responsible.

Mr McCord said the Victims Commission set up by the assembly was a “sham” and a new cross-community group would be established this week.

“We are going to set up our own victims’ group.

“We will help people the way they should be helped and not (through) a political agenda,” Mr McCord said.

“There is no group here in this country dealing properly with people being intimidated, particularly at interface areas.”

Members of the team would include Paul McIlwaine, whose son David, 18, and Andrew Robb, 19, were stabbed in Tandragee, County Armagh, in 2000.

Others are north Belfast priest Fr Aidan Troy and Bernadette O’Rawe, whose nephew, Gerard Devlin, was fatally stabbed in Whitecliffe Parade in west Belfast in February 2006.

Mr McCord said he intends to apply for grant funding for the group.

The executive has twice postponed an assembly debate on the establishment of the official four-member Victims Commission.

The dispute surrounds unionist demands for a chief commissioner, which Sinn Féin opposes, wrangling over the decision-making process and concerns about appointing staff with paramilitary backgrounds.

UVF gang

Raymond McCord jnr’s murder was one of a series blamed last year by ex-Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan on a UVF gang given immunity as Special Branch informers.

The SDLP motion that was debated “applauded the work of the McCord family’s campaign for justice”.

The family of murdered south Armagh man Paul Quinn attended the debate.

Paul Quinn, 21, from Cullyhanna, died last October after being attacked and beaten at a shed near Castleblayney in County Monaghan.

His family blame members of the IRA and say he had defied an order to leave the country. Sinn Féin has denied any republican involvement in the murder.