Violence related to the Troubles killed 13 this year, with loyalists responsible for nine of those deaths, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
David Cupples (25), a Protestant from the Braniel estate, east Belfast, died in hospital on Christmas Day. He was found unconscious on Sunday morning at Clifton Park Avenue in north Belfast.
He was the 13th person to die in violence related to the Troubles this year. Mr Cupples, who was a civilian worker at the British army Girdwood base in north Belfast, was subjected to a brutal assault, according to Det Supt Hugo Frew.
Mr Cupples was dropped off by car outside the Mater Hospital in north Belfast on Sunday around 6.50 a.m., and started making his way by foot to Girdwood. About 15 minutes later he was found at nearby Clifton Park Avenue with terrible head injuries. It seems some type of heavy implement was used to strike him.
Officially police say they have an open mind on the killing, but according to security sources, they believe loyalists were responsible. They are exploring two main avenues of investigation: that his death is related to the loyalist feud or that he was killed by loyalists who mistook him for a Catholic, with the current main focus on the latter possibility.
Mr Cupples's death means that loyalists were responsible for nine of the 13 killings in 2002. The IRA is blamed for one death and there were claims it was involved in one other killing.
Loyalist and republican groups were also heavily involved in so-called punishment shootings and beatings. This was the second-worst year for such violence.
Up to Christmas, 309 people were the victims of punishment attacks. This is just 23 fewer than the number of such victims in 2001, the worst year for paramilitary-style assaults going back to 1988 when police first began keeping an audit of these attacks.
Loyalist paramilitaries were again the main culprits, according to the figures from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). Last year loyalists carried out 214 attacks, compared to 118 perpetrated by republicans.
The same ratio of almost two-to-one continued this year. Loyalists were responsible for 203 attacks, republicans for 106. These statistics further break down as loyalists inflicting 114 punishment shootings and 89 beatings while republicans carried out 55 punishment shootings and 51 beatings.
The death toll, however, remained significantly lower than in the 10-year period before the 1994 IRA and loyalist ceasefires. Then the annual deaths tally was generally in the 75 to 100 mark. In 1972, the worst year of the Troubles, 470 people died in violence related to the security and sectarian situation.
This year's total of 13 was lower than in 2001 and 2000 when 17 and 18 people respectively died in security-related killings. 1999, when seven people died, was Northern Ireland's best year of the post-ceasefire period.
The UDA is no longer viewed as being officially on ceasefire, although some elements of that organisation claim to support the peace process.
This year, either directly or indirectly, the UDA was implicated in seven killings.
The first person to die this year was a UDA member, William Moore Campbell, from Coleraine, Co Derry, who died on January 3rd when a pipe bomb he was handling exploded in his face.
Nine days later the UDA carried out the first of two sectarian killings of Catholics. Mr Daniel McColgan (20), a postal worker from Newtownabbey, was gunned down as he reported for work at a postal depot in Rathcoole in north Belfast.
The murder was initially claimed by the Red Hand Defenders but later the UDA admitted it in its own name.
Just four days later Stephen McCullough (39), a Protestant from Rathcoole, was found dead in suspicious circumstances at the bottom of Cave Hill, in north Belfast. It remains unclear whether there was foul play. He is believed to have been a member of the UDA, and there were reports that hours before he died he approached a member of the British army offering to provide information about Mr McColgan's murder.
July was, as usual, a bitter month. William Morgan (27), a Protestant from north Belfast, died when he was struck by a stolen car in North Queen Street on July 6th. The killing was viewed as sectarian because the driver of the car appeared to deliberately mount the pavement to strike Mr Morgan. It triggered a hit-and-run retaliation in which a Catholic man was injured.
Towards the end of July the UDA claimed its second Catholic victim of the year, Gerard Lawlor, from Whitewell Road in north Belfast. He was shot dead close to his house as he was walking home from a night out on July 22nd. He was identified as a Catholic from the Glasgow Celtic shirt he was wearing.
The UDA described his killing as a "measured military response" to republican violence.
The autumn saw the start of a bloody internal loyalist feud involving the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) and different wings of the UDA. It is a feud which has more to do with a turf war over drugs and racketeering than any ideology and one in which the figure of Johnny Adair was always prominent. At least three people have died in the dispute, numerous others have been injured and many more forced from their homes.
On September 13th, Stephen Warnock, from Holywood, Co Down, originally from east Belfast, was shot dead while he sat in his BMW car in Newtownards, Co Down.
He was a senior LVF figure, heavily involved in drugs. The UDA was blamed for the killing, which precipitated further feuding. Jim Gray, the reputed UDA leader in east Belfast, was shot in the face in retaliation for Warnock's murder and survived the attack.
Nonetheless Adair and his friend John White attended Warnock's funeral. The furious UDA leadership sought to expel both men from the UDA, an order that is being resisted by Adair and White. So far C-Company of the UDA on the Lower Shankill has remained loyal to Adair.
Three weeks after Warnock's death, the UDA was blamed for the killing of Thomas Geoffrey Gray (41), a father of three from Beersbridge Road in east Belfast. He died after he was struck by a shotgun blast on the Ravenhill Road in south Belfast. Originally from Portadown, it was reported he had connections to the murdered LVF leader, Billy Wright.
Three days later on October 7th, Alex McKinley (22) was shot dead at Euston Street, off Woodstock Road in east Belfast. The LVF was blamed for his killing.
On November 30th, Mark Apsley (38), from Dickson Park, Ballygowan, Co Down, was shot dead at his doorstep by a lone gunman. Mr Apsley may have fallen foul of a senior UDA figure in Belfast.
This year also witnessed the death of senior LVF member Mark Fulton (42). He was found dead lying in his prison cell in Maghaberry Prison in July. A post-mortem appeared to confirm that he hanged himself with his belt.
Taxi-driver Barney McDonald was shot dead outside a snooker club at Donaghmore, near Dungannon, Co Tyrone, on April 17th. The IRA was held responsible by Mr McDonald's family, who said he had been in a row with a leading local IRA man.
On February 21st, Matthew Burns (26), from Castlewellan, Co Down, was shot dead outside a pub on the Burrenbridge Road in Castlewellan. There was a suspected drugs link to the killing. Mr Burns had survived previous paramilitary attacks.
Despite splits and infiltration, the "Real IRA" continues to pose a threat. On August 1st this year, David Caldwell from Backhill Road in Eglinton, Co Derry, was fatally wounded when he picked up a booby-trapped lunchbox at the territorial army base in Derry. A construction worker, he had served in the UDR, leaving in 1985. The "Real IRA" was believed to have been responsible.