Irish Republican News · August 10, 2010

Killer Knight freed again

A loyalist mass murderer Torrens Knight has been controversially freed from prison a second time.

The notorious killer behind the Greysteel massacre has had the suspension of his early release licence -- after being convicted of assaulting two sisters in a Coleraine bar -- reversed.

The reason for his release remains mysterious, but Knight remains a hero to loyalists and the British Crown forces for his bloody ‘trick or treat’ massacre of innocent Catholic civilians in the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel in October 1993.

Knight was returned to prison by British Direct Ruler Shaun Woodward last December to serve out the remainder of 12 life sentences.

But when his four-month term for assault was completed, he fought the decision to keep him behind bars.

The sisters he brutally attacked, Rosemary Sutherland and Caroline Nicholl, were last night said to be “utterly devastated” at news of his release.

East Derry assembly member John Dallat said neither they nor their police liaison officer had been told Knight was freed .

“Knight put these girls to hell and back and they may never fully recover from what he did to them,” he said.

Sentenced to four months’ imprisonment, at the time of his arrest he told the PSNI police he was “not ashamed” of his murderous past.

“This decision makes a complete mockery of the early release scheme and questions are being asked as to why his licence was only suspended and never revoked,” Dallat said.

Knight was convicted of eight counts of murder after the Hallowe’en gun attack in 1993, in which he shouted ‘Trick or Treat’ before opening fire on Catholic pub-goers.

Knight, a suspected Crown force agent, was also convicted of the sectarian killings of four Catholic workmen at Castlerock in May 1993.

The multiple killer appeared in front the Sentence Review Commissioners early this week and his challenge to the decision to suspend his early release under the Good Friday Agreement was granted without question.

He left Maghaberry on Thursday evening and is believed to have returned to Coleraine.

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