Man warned of loyalist death threat

A Poleglass man has denied he is a leading member of a dissident republican group and is fearful for his life after members of the PSNI visited his parents' home and warned him his life was under threat from the Red Hand Defenders, a cover name used by the UDA.

Emmanuel Curran said he received the threat on Saturday 9 August with the warning the unionist paramilitaries are going to take "military action" against him in the near future.

"The PSNI said they received an anonymous call saying that I am a leading republican dissident from West Belfast," he said. "This is not true, I have never been linked to republicanism. I am not who they think I am."

Curran added that since the threat he has been in contact with a homeless charity who are trying to find him accommodation as he is too scared to return home.

Sinn Féin councillor Michael Ferguson said the death threat was a worrying development. "We need people to start mounting legal challenges against the PSNI to find out how many details on nationalists these unionist paramilitaries have," he said. "We have now found that we are the victims of a state-sponsored murder campaign, so we need to know the truth."