Perpetrators of paramilitary punishment beatings can expect no mercy, a judge declared in the High Court in Belfast yesterday. Refusing to reduce a 12-year sentence imposed on Patrick McGuigan (27) from Joy Street, Belfast, Mr Justice Kerr said: "No one in Northern Ireland can be unaware of the misery that punishment beatings and shootings have caused in recent years.
"These attacks are designed to undermine the rule of law; they substitute the savage and arbitrary sanction of paramilitary organisations for the operation of the criminal law."
McGuigan was found guilty in December 1995 of causing grevious bodily harm to Hugh Richard McCartan who was beaten with an iron bar.