Loyalist blames UVF for pipe bomb

Jackie Mahood was shot at his taxi company in 1997

A former loyalist politician has blamed the Ulster Volunteer Force for throwing a pipe bomb into his north Belfast taxi depot.

Jackie Mahood is a former member of the Progressive Unionist Party, which is linked to the UVF.

He said the loyalist paramilitaries tried to kill him on two occasions, because he walked away from the PUP during the all-party talks at Stormont which led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

"Since then I have been shot twice, once in the head and once in the back," he said.

Jackie Mahood believes he was attacked by the UVF

"My brother was shot dead and my family have been tortured."

In July last year Mr Mahood was injured when shots were fired at his car in north Belfast.

In November 1997 he was shot twice in the head and left for dead in the upstairs offices of his taxi firm, Call-A-Cab, by two gunmen.

Mr Mahood's brother Bobby, 42, was shot dead along with another man Jackie Coulter, who was a member of the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association, as they sat in a car in north Belfast in August 2000.

The killings were blamed on the UVF, which was then involved in a feud with the UDA, in which seven men were killed in north and west Belfast.