A NEW victims support group is to be set up this week, the father of a UVF murder victim said yesterday.
Raymond McCord, whose son was beaten to death by loyalist paramilitaries in 1997, made the announcement at Stormont where Assembly members prepared to debate a motion backing investigation of the case.
The new group will comprise six members, three from each community and will include Ardoyne priest Fr Aidan Troy.
Mr McCord said the Stormont Executive’s plans for a four-member victims commission were a “sham”.
“We are going to set up our own victims’ group,” he said. “We will help people the way they should be helped and not [through] a political agenda.
“There is no group here in this country dealing properly with people being intimidated, particularly at interface areas,” he said.
Support for Mr McCord also came from Stephen and Briege Quinn, whose son Paul was murdered in a remote Co Monaghan farm building last October.
“Our son was beaten to death, murdered,” Briege Quinn said.
“No matter what young lads do, nobody has the right to murder. So I am here to listen to the debate today and to support Mr McCord,” she said.
In the Assembly, an SDLP motion in support of “the McCord family’s campaign for justice” received unanimous support.
The McCord case was investigated by former police ombudsman Nuala O’Loan, who reported she had uncovered collusion between the RUC at the time and members of a UVF gang who were informants.
Afterwards Mr McCord said: “Now we have the DUP willing to support us. This was not happening before, it has been a change of attitude by them under their new leadership.”
Members of the new victims group include Paul McIlwaine, whose son David (18) and his friend Andrew Robb (19) were stabbed in Tandragee, Co Armagh, in 2000.
Also included is Bernadette O’Rawe, whose nephew Gerard Devlin was fatally stabbed in Whitecliffe Parade in west Belfast in February 2006.
The Executive is still divided over plans for the victims commission.