UDA leader pledges 'like for like' retaliation

In an interview with the Guardian today, a newly installed brigadier of the UDA has said that his organisation will match "like for like" any killing of Protestants by republicans.

The 25-year-old loyalist paramilitary leader, who recently took over in north Belfast, said that the UDA would not engage in any "unprovoked attack" but would "reciprocate" if Protestants were murdered.

"I am not a bigot. I don't believe in shooting people because of their views. But if they [republicans] hit Protestants, it will be like for like. We have to defend our own people," he said.

The loyalist leader, nicknamed 'The Turk', is the UDA's youngest-ever brigadier to sit on the organisation's six-man inner council.

On the murder of the 19-year-old Catholic father of one, Gerard Lawlor, who was shot dead last month as he walked home from a pub, 'The Turk' said similar murders could occur in the future.

"Tensions were high the night Gerard Lawlor was killed – but if someone else was shot, I couldn't say it wouldn't happen again. There have been 14 or 15 Protestants shot and wounded, and two others run over and killed by cars, which I count as murders, in the past few months," he said.

The Ulster Freedom Fighters – linked to the UDA – later claimed responsibility for the Lawlor killing, claiming it was a "measured military response". A statement lambasted by Security Minister Jane Kennedy as "a pathetic attempt to justify sordid sectarian murder".

Despite the UDA admitting to that murder, the loyalist brigadier said he did not view the ceasefire as broken, "because we are holding to the 'no first strike' policy, agreed some weeks ago".

He added: "But it is getting us nowhere. The government won't say the IRA has broken its ceasefire because they cannot put Sinn Fein out of Stormont. We don't have that card to play."

(GMcG)