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The past two years have been the toughest of my career as a crime journalist in Northern Ireland. I ve been abused, harassed, and targeted by Loyalist paramilitaries who have not only threatened to shoot me dead, but to rape one of my children. When my name was spray-painted on walls alongside gun crosshairs, I sat back and asked myself, how did it get to this? How have terrorist thugs, supposedly under the watch of police, been able to succeed with such ease in putting a target on my back?
The answer is disturbingly simple; they ve been allowed to.
UVF chief Stephen Matthews
But what was not revealed in court are the annual six-figure sums of public cash given to ACT, which was set up to help the UVF transition into a community organisation.
Last year the registered charity, which counts several former UVF life sentence prisoners on its board of trustees, was given almost £300,000 of government cash.
UVF leaders John Bunter Graham and Harry Stockman have met with senior civil servants under the auspices of ACT to ask for £5m of funding to help the paramilitary group abandon criminality.
Government sources told Sunday Life that the charity s public defence of the Pitt Park intimidation could damage future cash requests.
Ogle murder accused arrested over Pitt Park gathering hid cocaine under his bed belfasttelegraph.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from belfasttelegraph.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
UK Government ‘prioritising support’ for efforts for a safer Northern Ireland 11/02/2021, 11:57 pm
Emergency services attend the scene in Hawthorn Street, Belfast, after security alerts in Londonderry and Belfast (Liam McBurney/PA)
The UK Government is “prioritising support” for efforts to thwart terrorism in Northern Ireland.
It hailed the transformation of the security situation in the region over the last 20 years as a credit to the people of the region and security agencies.
However, it noted the murder of journalist Lyra McKee in 2019, a “killing that shocked the world”, as a reminder of a “small number of dissident republicans who remain intent on killing”.
The scene in the Pitt Park area of east Belfast on Tuesday
“We were there to stop anything from happening and to protect the public. Our primary function was to give people in the area and local people a sense of reassurance that police were there and visible. We were there primarily around public safety.”
He added: “Since that incident we have put some additional resources into east Belfast and we are paying attention to particular areas of east Belfast.”
Mr Walls said an investigation is now under way “to allow police to consider the information and evidence they have” and then “to move to prosecution”.