Rewards for UDA thugs are misdirected

By Brian Feeney (for the Irish News)

There’s one conclusion you can draw about the attitude of the British administration in the north to the UDA - it’s consistent. The UDA has always been the NIO’s favourite paramilitary organisation. Perhaps that’s understandable since it was created and artificially sustained by British intelligence and RUC Special Branch since 1971 as a classic ‘counter-gang’. Despite the fact that the UDA carried out the most appalling torture murders of the Troubles, it was kept legal until 1992 by which time its members had killed nearly 400 people, the vast majority of whom were innocent Catholics.

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