Twenty years of memories and still no answers

1992: TEN KILLED, MANY WOUNDED BY RUC POLICEMAN AND LOYALISTS IN SEVEN DAYS | NEW EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION

» BY PEADAR WHELAN

THE FIRST WEEKEND in February 2012 saw nationalists across Belfast gathering to remember family members and friends who were killed 20 years ago in a frenzy of anti-nationalist bloodletting.

In a spate of killings carried out over a seven-day period, between 30 January and 5 February 1992, 10 nationalists men were cut down as loyalist gun gangs and an RUC police officer went on the rampage.

And as those killed were being remembered, new evidence pointing the finger of collusion at the RUC is emerging.

Five people were shot dead and seven injured in an attack by the UDA on the Seán Graham betting shop on the Ormeau Road in 1992.

A new report, carried out by the victims’ families is challenging the original RUC investigation. The report accuses RUC Special Branch of handing a Browning pistol, used in the attack, back to UDA quartermaster Billy Stobie, an RUC Special Branch agent. He was involved in the shootings of student Brian Adam Lambert in 1987 and solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989. Billy Stobie was himself shot dead on 12 December 2001.

(Clockwise from top left) Paul Moran, Pádraig Ó Cléirigh, Paddy Loughran, Pat McBride, Michael O’Dwyer, Jack Duffin, Christy Doherty, Willie McManus, Peter Magee and James Kennedy

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