Loyalists in Derry death threats

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday August 03, 2002 19:41 by McMean

The UDA, using the cover name of the 'Red Hand Defenders', has said it would make a "military response" to the Thursday attack by republican dissidents on a British Army base in Derry.

Their warning was similar to a statement they issued after
admitting to the murder of Catholic teenager Gerard Lawlor in
north Belfast last week.

But the UDA has appeared bent on increasing sectarian tensions in
Derry after the loyalist terror gang issued death threats against
Catholics living in Protestant areas last week. The threat,
delivered to a local newsroom, singled out Catholics living in
the Waterside area in Derry City saying that Catholics "will not
be tolerated in Protestant areas of the Waterside".

In their statement, the UDA also claimed responsibility for
shooting a Catholic teenager in the leg last week in Derry,
saying it was a measured military response to ongoing attacks on
Protestant homes in the Fountain area of Derry and on homes in
Limavady. It bore a striking resemblance to the UDA statement
released in the wake of the sectarian killing of Gerard Lawlor in
Belfast.

Sectarian trouble has been ongoing in and around the Fountain
estate in Derry City and at one point the UDA's Derry and North
Antrim Brigadier was spotted with other loyalists in the Fountain
estate during recent attacks on nationalists, including pipe bomb
attacks.

Sinn Fein councillor for the Waterside, Lynn Fleming, described
the threats as appalling but not surprising.

"It is very obvious that the UDA are intent on bringing their
anti-Catholic sectarian pogrom to Derry," she said. "They have
been behind numerous pipe bombings and gun attacks in the
Northwest, culminating in the shooting of the young man last week
in Heron Way in the Waterside. They are motivated solely by
sectarian bigotry."

The Sinn Fein councillor urged nationalists to be vigilant and
appealed for no one to be drawn into a cycle of sectarian hate.