Former UVF brigadier questioned on killings

9 March 2010
The Irish News
Barry McCaffrey

A former UVF 'brigadier' was last night among three men being questioned by police as part of a major investigation into loyalist murders. Rab Warnock (62) was arrested by officers from the PSNI's Serious Crime Branch (SCB) at his home on the outskirts of north Belfast yesterday morning.

Warnock, who was the so-called brigadier of the UVF in south-east Antrim throughout the 1990s, is being questioned about a series of killings carried out by the Mount Vernon UVF.

Jailed for UVF explosives offences in the 1970s, Warnock was expelled from the loyalist paramilitary group five years ago after he was allegedly identified as a police informer.

In January 2007 then Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan published a report, Operation Ballast, which revealed that Mark Haddock's Mount Vernon unit had been protected from prosecution by Special Branch in more than a dozen murders because many of the gang were working as informers.

Detectives from the Historic Enquiries Team (HET) conducted a three-year investigation into Haddock's activities which led to 20 UVF members appearing in court charged with a series of offences, including the October 2000 murder of UDA leader Tommy English.

However, there was controversy in December when it was announced that the investigation was being transferred from the HET to the SCB.

Families of UVF murder victims raised concern that the removal of the investigation from the HET would prevent the Mount Vernon gang's Special Branch handlers facing prosecution for collusion.

A PSNI spokeswoman last night described the SCB investigation as "large and complex" and said it would continue for a "considerable" time.