Three men have been remanded in custody charged with murdering the loyalist paramilitary Billy Wright inside Nothern Ireland's Maze prison.

Christopher McWilliams, John Kennaway and John Glennon were also charged with possession of a gun.

They appeared before Lisburn magistrates and were remanded to appear before the Maze Magistrates' Court on January 14.

Wright was shot dead on Saturday inside the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland.

The following day, the Loyalist Volunteer Force killed a former Republican prisoner at hotel in County Tyrone.

The Prison Service investigation into Wright's murder began immediately after the outbreak of violence.

Two guns were found and three men were held for questioning. But most people wanted to know how firearms had ever been smuggled into the jail.

The Maze Prison houses Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries

The shooting came only weeks after the IRA prisoner Liam Averill escaped from the Maze by dressing as a woman.

Both incidents have damaged the prison's reputation as a maximum security jail.

The Maze has more than 300 inmates who are members of paramilitary groups from both sides of the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland.

The inmates have not yet served at least 10 years of their sentences, the key requirement for parole eligibility.

Wright was jailed for eight years in March this year for threatening to kill Gwen Reed during a punishment attack on her daughter's boyfriend in a field in Portadown in August 1995.
 

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