The UDA's former leader in east Belfast was shot dead last night, writes Dan Keenan, Northern News Editor. Jim Gray (47) was fatally wounded in a shooting incident in the Knockwood Park area of the city where he lived.
One early and unconfirmed report said he was shot after answering a knock at his door. The shooting was reported to the PSNI shortly after 8pm.
Police would not say if the murder was directly connected to internal loyalist tensions. The UDA has not been directly involved with the feud between the UVF and the splinter Loyalist Volunteer Force which has claimed five lives since May.
Last April Gray was stood down as UDA "commander" in the east of the city.
He was facing charges connected to the possession and concealment of criminal property and money laundering. He denied the charges.
His assets had been frozen following a court order last spring. If, as suspected, Gray's killing was carried out by rival loyalist gunmen it represents a serious racketing-up of tensions.
The murder also follows a call yesterday from Northern Secretary Peter Hain for loyalists to adopt a purely political path. "The choice for loyalist paramilitaries is clear: play the political role that you claim as your motive, or face the rigour of the law as the mafia organisations into which you seem to be degenerated," he said.
Gray was shot and injured in September 2002 in another incident which the PSNI said at the time was "loosely linked" to the murder of an LVF man Stephen Warnock in Newtownards, Co Down.
New inquiry into death of man
Police in Derry are expected to announce later today that they have begun a fresh investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of a local man whose body was recovered from the River Foyle last Wednesday.
The family of father-of-five Jim Gilchrist (63), Woodbrook , have always maintained that his death was not suicide. Last night his son, Martin, confirmed that the police had linked their forensic examination of the scene to his father's death.