Republican News · Thursday 28 March 2002

UDA behind Derry shooting

UDA gunmen raked the home of a Catholic family with gunfire in the new Shepherd's Glen development in the Waterside in Derry, last Wednesday, 20 March at 10.30pm. Four people, three men and a woman, escaped injury after four shots were fired at the house.

One of those in the house at the time of the attack, a 20-year-old Catholic man who wishes to remain anonymous, said "we were attacked just because we are Catholics.

"I was in my bedroom when I heard four loud shots. I jumped off the bed and ran towards the window, I saw a man making his escape on a mountain bike."

The mountain bike was later discovered on an embankment bordering the loyalist Irish Street estate. Two other men and a 19-year-old girl were also in the house at the time.

"This is a newly opened Catholic development and the UDA see fit to attack these homes," said Sinn Féin councillor for the area, Lynn Fleming. "The attack is just a continuation of attacks carried out by the UDA on nationalist people and their homes that have been going on since last year."

Leading loyalist jailed

Leading North Belfast loyalist Gary Smith has been sentenced to three years imprisonment after being arrested for making a hoax bomb call in relation to the Holy Cross girls school. Smith made the call claiming to be from the Red Hand Defenders, a cover name used by the UDA. Smith, released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, also had his license revoked.

Smith phoned in the bomb warning last 25 June to a Belfast-based news station, at the height of the Holy Cross protests.

The leading loyalist had left his fingerprints on the handset of the public telephone on the Cavehill Road. Smith is the second loyalist to have his licence revoked, the other being Johnny Adair.

Yorkgate attacks on teens

A 14-year-old boy was the second Catholic to be attacked by loyalists in the Yorkgate Complex in North Belfast in the space of a week when he was set upon by four loyalists on Monday 11 March.

The incident comes just one week after a 19-year-old Anthony Reid was stabbed in the chest. Both attacks took place in the middle of the Yorkgate complex in broad daylight and despite the area being under surveillance from CCTV.

According to the boy, his attackers were wearing Celtic tops when they approached him and asked him where he lived. When he told them that he was from Ardoyne they called him "a wee Taig" and dragged him over the road to the nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet where they kicked and punched him before a local motorist stopped and saved him. The gang ran off towards loyalist Tigers Bay.

Meanwhile, the father of the 14-year-old has demanded to see the Yorkgate complex's security videotapes because he says the RUC/PSNI have shown no interest in the case.

Sinn Féin councillor Gerard Brophy called on nationalists to be careful while in the complex "given that both these attacks have happened in the afternoon".