Free Republic

Police colluded with loyalists behind several murders in north Belfast, a report by the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland is to confirm. Nuala O'Loan's report will say UVF members in the area committed murders and other serious crimes while working as informers for Special Branch. The report will also say some Special Branch officers protected the killers and ensured they were not caught. NI Secretary Peter Hain said it "shone a torch into a very dark corner". The report, to be published on Monday, will call for a number of murder investigations to be re-opened. But it is unlikely that...

The UVF leadership, in the first interview of its kind in almost 30 years, reveals today its internal thinking on winding down the organisation, decommissioning, its attitude to the latest political process and a host of other issues. The secretive organisation has revealed it will not make a statement on the future of its organisation until after the November 24 deadline for a political deal here. In the interview, the UVF signals its preference for an internal political settlement, but also flags up potential hostility to the two governments' alternative 'Plan B'. That new position was outlined by the paramilitary...