Top UDA man named as police agent

One of the most notorious sectarian killers of the conflict worked for the RUC Special Branch police, it has been revealed.

Top UDA paramilitary John White was jailed for life for the 1973 murders of nationalist politician Paddy Wilson and Irene Andrews, both of whom suffered multiple stab wounds.

White is understood to have become an informer after his release from prison.

A former associate of Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair, White has been living in exile since February 2003, when he was forced out of the North during a feud inside the UDA in which White had sided with Adair’s so-called “C” Company in the lower Shankill.

Loyalists also blame him for the collapse of the CLMC -- an umbrella leadership covering the UDA, the UVF and the Red Hand Commando.

Last week it emerged that Torrens Knight, convicted of a dozen brutal sectarian murders and accused of several more, was working at the time as a paid police agent and informer. Knight was one of the UDA gang involved in the notorious ‘trick or treat’ machine-gunning of a Catholic bar in Greysteel, Coounty Derry in 1993.

Knight continued to receive large cash payments from the police following his release from jail in 2000.

Sinn Fein Assembly member Alex Maskey said that the rewarding of Catholic killers had been happening under the noses of the SDLP on the Policing Board.

“Nationalists and republicans throughout Ireland are rightly outraged that the PSNI have been filling the pockets of such notorious Catholic killers.

“Members of the SDLP have publicly claimed outrage yet these payments have been taking place by the PSNI under the noses of the SDLP on the Policing Board.

“But we should not be surprised at this. The SDLP told everyone that they were going onto the Board to ensure democratic accountability even when the power to achieve this wasn,t there. They told us that they were going onto the Board to end the use of Plastic Bullets, yet ended up purchasing an even more lethal device.

“Now they have presided over a system which has been paying thousands of pounds to those responsible for masterminding and carrying out sectarian massacres against the nationalist and republican community. These most recent exposures show once again how hollow SDLP protestations to be holding this force to account actually are.”

Urgent Appeal