Convicted loyalists walk free
BY LAURA FRIEL
Three loyalists convicted of having hundreds of documents containing the names and personal details of nationalists and republicans walked free from Belfast Crown Court this week after the presiding Judge imposed a 12-month suspended sentence.
Their release comes in a week that more nationalists were informed by the RUC of loyalist death threats against them. A number of families in the Ardoyne area of North Belfast were warned that threats had been issued by the Red Hand Defenders.
Just days earlier, Judge Nicholson announced that he would not be imposing a custodial sentence on three loyalists, Mark Barr, William Gary Hutchinson, Belfast and Paul Alexander Givens.
All three had been found guilty of a catalogue of charges of possessing documents likely to be useful to terrorists. The three were arrested in connection with a raid in Crimea Street during which the documents were recovered. That was in 1989 but the arrests came when the Stevens team later sent the documents to New Scotland Yard for forensic examination. The men were charged after their fingerprints were discovered on the documents, photocopies of British Army and RUC intelligence files including personal details and photographs, taken from Thieval Barracks, Lisburn.
Despite the fact that the three convicted men refused to cooperate with the court and offered no explanations for the presence of their prints on the documents, the judge said that there was no evidence to indicate that the three had used the documents to perpetrate any acts of violence or indicate that any harm had come to anyone.
Meanwhile, North Belfast Sinn Féin Assembly member Gerry Kelly has warned nationalist residents of North Belfast to be vigilant in the wake of another series of loyalist death threats.
News of more threats against nationalists came as it was revealed that RUC officers whose details were in a stolen diary have been offered a relocation grant or a £50,000 security package. The information contained in the diary has been described as minimal and is believed to include only the officers' names, barracks and phone numbers. Gerry Kelly hit out at this double standards between the treatment of RUC officers and nationalist whose details are in the hands of loyalists.
``Over the past number of years hundreds of nationalists have been told that their personal details have fallen into the hands of loyalist death squad, information compiled by the RUC and British military intelligence. Those nationalists were given the bare minimum of information about who had their details and were not offered a relocation grant or £50,000.''
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