MEMBERS of a Co Antrim Protestant family who were driven into exile by loyalist paramilitaries two years ago returned yesterday to live in the North in defiance of the threat hanging over them.
The intimidation of Charles and Agnes Kinkead and their family began after the UVF murder in June 1994 of a Catholic taxi driver, Gerald Anthony Brady, who was the boyfriend of their daughter, Michelle.
Mr Brady (27) was found shot dead in his taxi in Carrickfergus and the Ulster Volunteer Force claimed he was a "republican activist". However, Michelle and her father, interviewed on television, denied this and described his killers as "scum".
Shortly afterwards, Mr and Mrs Kinkead were threatened at gunpoint and told the family had 24 hours to get out of the North. They moved to England, living in various locations in conditions which they described yesterday as "unbearable".
Arriving in Belfast yesterday, Mr Kinkead told UTV: "We didn't deserve to be put into exile because the UVF murdered a Roman Catholic fellow who did no harm to nobody."
He said that the conditions in exile had split up his family and they no longer knew the whereabouts of a teenage son and daughter who had gone their own ways.
Mrs Agnes Kinkead said: "I'm Just glad to be back, because I had to give up a lot of friends and that when I left here. I've no friends back in England." They said that Michelle was still too frightened to return.
Mr Kinkead commented: "There never will be peace when people like us are not allowed back into our country, when beatings still go on. It has to stop sometime. I am coming home. I don't care what they do. I'm here and I'm staying here, and that's it finished. I've had enough of it."
The couple are moving into temporary accommodation while they seek a permanent home. They were met by Mrs Nancy Gracey, formerly of the organisation FAIT (Families Against Intimidation and Terror), who has kept in contact with them. She said: "Nobody, but nobody, should be made suffer like the Kinkead family has."