Dissident loyalist paramilitaries have been accused of attempting to derail the peace process and the final phase of the Mitchell review after attacks on the homes of a leading republican in west Belfast and a family in Bushmills, Co Antrim, on Wednesday night.
A fundamentalist Protestant preacher, a senior member of the Red Hand Defenders, is expected to appear before Cookstown Magistrates' Court this morning, along with a second man, charged with possession of explosives with intent to endanger life after another incident on Tuesday. The two men were arrested when a pipe-bomb exploded in a vehicle stopped by police outside Dungannon, Co Tyrone.
In recent weeks leading republicans have warned of an imminent attack against a high-profile republican, and the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, yesterday urged all nationalists and republicans to be vigilant "at this tense and critical period".
The Ulster Unionist Party leader, Mr David Trimble, speaking during a break in the negotiations at Stormont yesterday, said that the dissident loyalists would not succeed in their aim of wrecking the peace process. "I've no doubt that those responsible for these attacks were hoping that they would in some way deflect or destroy this process. I do have to say to them quite simply, they will fail, their actions are futile."
Mr Liam Shannon noticed a suspicious object in front of his home in La Salle Park, off the Falls Road, at 10 p.m. on Wednesday. The RUC described the device, which was attached to a can of petrol and a cluster of six-inch nails, as "particularly dangerous". Neighbours were evacuated while British army bomb disposal experts made the device safe.
A former internee, Mr Shannon has claimed he was hooded and tortured while in detention in the 1970s. He is the current chairman of the Felons Club on the Andersonstown Road and is a leading member of the National Graves Association, which tends republican plots.
Mr Adams said that Mr Shannon had been informed some time ago that RUC files on him had gone "missing" and were in the possession of loyalists. He maintained that collusion was still a "serious threat". The RUC said last night that it was "mischievous in the extreme" to link a genuine police warning to allegations of collusion.
In the attack on the McCuskey family in Bushmills, paint was thrown through a window and the family car was set alight. Mr Terence McCuskey said that the attack on his family, the second this year, was because he was in a mixed marriage.
The Irish Republican Socialist Party, the political wing of the INLA, condemned the attacks and called on the paramilitary groupings to re-examine its proposals for a non-aggression pact. A spokesman, Mr Fra Halligan, said: "When it is finally recognised that the Good Friday agreement has collapsed, what will fill the void? I think the last number of months and days has given us that answer - sectarian violence."