A 33-year-old man was charged last night with the attempted murder of a man stabbed in a brutal sectarian attack in Co Antrim two years ago. He is due to appear before magistrates in the morning.
The attackers threatened to cut up their victim but he managed to escape while they were hunting for a saw to dismember him.
Another man, Neil White (30) was recently sentenced to 16 years in jail after admitting the attempted murder in Ballymena.
The latest man to be charged was arrested by police hunting gang members who strangled and repeatedly stabbed Catholic Michael Reid during a merciless attack in a house in the staunchly Protestant Harryville area of the town.
The suspect was arrested in the centre of the town yesterday. He is due to appear before Ballymena Magistrates Court this morning.
When White was sentenced at Belfast Crown Court last month, Mr Justice Coghlin hit out at the "corrosive toxin" of sectarianism eating into Northern Ireland 's social fabric.
He told the would-be killer: "Ultimately the victim went to ground and pretended he was dead. You were assigned to guard the victim while others left the premises with the chilling words: `We are going to have to get a saw to cut him up, look at the size of him'."
At one stage Mr Reid (31), an imposing 6ft 4ins tall, went limp and pretended to be dead in a bid to survive the relentless assault. The victim, who has since gone into hiding, was visiting a friend in Harryville when White, of Wakehurst Road, Ballymena, and two other men came to the house.
Mr Reid was beaten with a blunt object, stabbed and throttled with cable after they discovered his religion. Two men went on the run after White's arrest.
The three men launched their attack on Mr Reid after discovering he was a Catholic because of where he lived in the town. Passing sentence on White, the judge added that a close relative with a greater intellect had influenced his actions.