A man shot dead in a Northern Ireland pub last night had served a prison sentence following the murder of a young Catholic mother nine years ago, it emerged today.
Mr Stephen Manners (40) was murdered in Newtownards in Co Down in a killing blamed on former loyalist paramilitary comrades and linked to drugs.
The murder came in the midst of an escalation in republican and loyalist activity in Northern Ireland ahead of the June 7th UK general election.
Mr Manners was murdered by two masked men three months after he appeared in court on a drug-related charge.
A one-time member of the outlawed Ulster Volunteer Force, Mr Manners was found guilty with four other men of murdering Ms Ann Marie Smyth, a Catholic mother-of-two found strangled and with her throat cut in 1992.
His conviction was reduced to assisting offenders by the Court of Appeal four years ago and he was released shortly afterwards.
He was in Jimmy Mac's bar on North Street, Newtownards, when the killers burst in and opened fire on the table where he had been sitting.
But when they realised he was not there the pair moved to the downstairs toilets and shot him several times.
RUC assistant Chief Constable Mr Stephen White said: "It has all the hallmarks of a paramilitary assassination.
"We are talking about two masked men carrying out a fairly ruthless and clinical murder."
Today British army bomb disposal experts defused two pipe bombs in Portrush in Co Antrim.
One was thrown at a house on Bath Street, the other was found in the garden of a house on Glenmannis Road. Neither exploded and no one was hurt.
PA