Loyalist bid to terrorise family out of estate

A woman whose north Belfast home has been targeted in a series of
sectarian attacks has said loyalists are trying to drive her out of the
area.

The living room window of her house at Deerpark Road was smashed in the
most recent incident and pot plants were also damaged.

Several months ago her cat was attacked and mutilated.

The woman, who did not want to be identified for fear of further
attacks, said her daughter was now too scared to stay in the house.

She said her family was being targeted because they are Catholic.

"They've wrote graffiti on the wall, basically aimed at me and other
neighbours in the street," she said.

"The attacks are just getting worse instead of better. My oldest girl,
who's seven, she won't stay in the house anymore.

"So basically it's only me and my six month-old child. This wee one is
a bit young yet to understand, but you're just waiting for one of us to
get injured."

In May, her seven-year-old daughter was on her way out to school when
she found the mutilated remains of her cat, Roger, lying in the
driveway of her home.

All four of its paws had been cut off and it had been left to die.


DEATH THREAT


A west Belfast man has denied he is a leading member of a dissident
republican group and is fearful for his life after members of the PSNI
visited his parents' home and warned him his life was under threat from
the Red Hand Defenders, a cover name used by the UDA.

Emmanuel Curran said he received the threat last week with the warning
the unionist paramilitaries are going to take "military action" against
him in the near future.

"The PSNI said they received an anonymous call saying that I am a
leading republican dissident from West Belfast," he said. "This is not
true, I have never been linked to republicanism. I am not who they
think I am."

Curran added that since the threat he has been in contact with a
homeless charity who are trying to find him accommodation as he is too
scared to return home.

Sinn Fein councillor Michael Ferguson said the death threat was a
worrying development. "We need people to start mounting legal
challenges against the PSNI to find out how many details on
nationalists these unionist paramilitaries have," he said. "We have now
found that we are the victims of a state-sponsored murder campaign, so
we need to know the truth."


NEWRY BOMB

* A small bomb detonated inside an abandoned car in the town Newry on
Friday night, but nobody was injured.

No group claimed responsibility for the blast Friday night inside
Newry's main bus depot, but republican dissidents were blamed for the
incident.