UVF KILLERS PROTECTED BY PSNI

Unionist paramilitaries worked for the police when they planned
the murder in 1997 of a north Belfast Protestant, according to a
disturbing new report.

Raymond McCord Jnr was beaten to death and his body dumped in a
quarry in 1997. His father has defied repeated death threats to
speak out against the killers.

The report prepared by human rights group British-Irish Rights
Watch will allege that the head of the UVF has been a Special
Branch informant for two decades -- and one of his top men was
another police agent who took part in almost a dozen murders and
attempted murders.

The report will be presented to British secretary of state Peter
Hain, the United Nations, the European parliament and Amnesty
International.

Raymond McCord Sr said the UVF men who acted as police informers
were given "free rein" by their handlers to carry out murders
after the 1994 ceasefire.

"I have had meetings with British-Irish Rights Watch and they
are very keen to take up my son's case. The man who gave the
order to kill my son is a Special Branch agent and at least one
of the men who carried out the killing is an informer.

"They will be named in the report, which, in effect, proves the
British government killed my son."

Mr McCord said the intervention by the London-based group was a
major development that would pile pressure on authorities to
hold a public inquiry into his son's murder.

"The British government is going to have to listen to American
politicians and the United Nations," he said.

"They can try and disregard one person like me but not if other
countries start asking about the human rights of my son and
other victims."

The report could be the first step on the road towards gaining a
full independent judicial inquiry into the murdered man's death.

British-Irish Rights Watch deputy director Lorna Davidson said
the McCord report would be completed before August.

"We want to pressurise different governments into supporting
calls for a proper inquiry into Mr McCord's murder," she said.

"We want to help his family get justice and the only way they
feel this can be reached is through an inquiry."