UDA’s drug addiction on display

The unionist paramilitary UDA has been publicly shamed after one member was seen snorting cocaine at an event outside Belfast as children were being urged to cheer on the group’s youth wing.

The South East Antrim UDA thug was caught on camera at the band practice in Newtownabbey’s Rathcoole estate.

Not knowing the rehearsal was being recorded by a mother of one of the children, one UDA member could be seen sniffing hundreds of pounds worth of cocaine.

After taking the drug, his head shakes for a second and then he wipes his nostrils before snorting deeply.

Community representatives told the Sunday Life, who obtained the recording, that they were embarrassed at the scenes.

“It’s bad enough that you have a child beating a bass drum to chants of ‘up the UYM’ (Ulster Young Militants, the UDA’s youth wing). Now you have this idiot in the background snorting an eight-ball. It’s embarrassing,” said a loyalist source.

“We all know the UDA is just a drug-dealing gang, but taking cocaine at a kids’ band practice is a new low.”

The UDA man recorded caught on camera is believed to be a former Rathcoole ‘commander’ who was demoted to the rank of an ‘enforcer’.

Since nominally declaring a '‘ceasefirer’ in 1994, the paramilitary group has been largely reinvented as a giant drug-dealing - and drug-taking - crime organisation, earning more than £2.5m per year from cocaine sales alone.

Urgent Appeal