Families 'dread' meeting killers

Torrens Knight: Greysteel killer leaves Maze prison

Relatives of victims the 86 paramilitary prisoners freed from Northern Ireland's jails on Friday are having to come to terms with their releases.

Some face the prospect of meeting their loved one's killers face to face as the prisoners return to their communities.

Alan McBride 's wife and father-in-law were among nine people murdered when the IRA bombed a fishmongers on the staunchly loyalist Shankill Road in west Belfast.

Mr McBride has said he accepts the releases are an inevitable part of the peace process.

"I think it's part and parcel of the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process," he said.

"I've had to accept it but I've never ever said I thought it was right or it was just. In fact I've said the complete opposite.

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"I always thought that this part of the agreement was wrong and it was injust."

When the loyalist Ulster Freedom Fighters attacked the Rising Sun Bar in Greysteel, County Londonderry, a week after the Shankill bomb, they murdered eight people.

Kieran O'Doherty's daughter Christine was shot and injured - and many of those killed were his lifelong friends.

The killers, Torrens Knight, Jeffrey Deeney and Stephen Irwin, were among those released from the Maze prison on Friday.

Mr O'Doherty believes they never should have been released.

"Any vicious thugs that come into a bar to shoot as crowd of young people and old people should never be released," he said.

"It doesn't matter what side of the community they come from."

James Morgan, a 16-year-old schoolboy, was hitch-hiking near his home in Annesborough, County Down, three years ago when he was abducted by loyalists.

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He was tortured before being beaten to death with a hammer. His body was doused with petrol and set alight before being dumped in a pit with dead animals.

Norman Coopey, from Clough, which is close to Annesborough, was convicted for his part in the killing and was sentenced to life.

No paramilitary group claimed responsibility for the murder but Coopey asked to be moved onto the Loyalist Volunteer Force wing of the Maze prison.

The group had announced a ceasefire and the then Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam, ruled that its members would qualify for early release under the Good Friday Agreement.

Coopey was also freed on Friday, 18 months after his conviction.

James Morgan's mother Philomena said she would "dread ever meeting this man again".

But the heartbroken mother, who voted for the Good Friday Agreement in the 1998 referendum, said she would have to accept it.

And she reaffirmed that, if she could vote again, should would still vote yes.