Dissident republicans are suspected of shooting dead a former loyalist prisoner in front of his teenage Catholic girlfriend in Co Tyrone, it emerged tonight.
Mr Charles Folliard (30) was gunned down as he sat in his car outside her home in Strabane.
The RUC, who blamed republicans for the shooting, said they could not yet identify which faction was involved but it is believed Continuity IRA gunmen may have been responsible. Sinn Féin categorically denied the Provisional IRA carried out the shooting.
Mr Folliard, who served seven years in jail for his part in an aborted booby trap bombing linked to the UDA, was hit at least three times.
The shooting happened just hours after Sinn Féin's ruling executive backed the IRA's decision to put some of their weapons beyond use.
Mr Derek Hussey, an Ulster Unionist MLA who knew the dead man, said: "Given that republicans were the source, it makes one wonder. Are there individuals within mainstream republicanism who are having difficulties with the political line taken by the movement?"
Strabane is a predominantly nationalist town with strong Sinn Féin and IRA support, but according to security sources a small number of republicans opposed to the Belfast Agreement with links to the Continuity IRA also live there.
Mr Folliard, a self-employed gardener, was shot from close range as he sat in the driver's seat of his car. His 16-year-old girlfriend Ms Nicola McAnenny was standing outside her house waving goodbye when he was killed.
Two masked men pulled her to one side. One of them fired three shots at Mr Folliard before moving to the front of the car in Oakland Park to fire another three. The girl's father Mr Aidan McAnenny, and her pregnant mother Paula, heard their daughter screaming and when he rushed outside the gunman threatened to shoot him as well, neighbours said.
The two men then ran off down a lane and into the nearby republican Ballycolman estate. Nicola, the eldest of six children, was unhurt.
Mr Folliard, from the neighbouring village of Douglas Bridge, was freed from prison in 1998, and according to friends, had cut all his paramilitary links. He had been part of a plot to blow up a Catholic worker at a quarry near Newtownstewart, but took fright and tipped off the police.
By the time he was jailed for conspiracy to murder and other terrorist charges, he had disassociated himself from the UDA. One friend said: "He just wanted to get on with his life, and put the past behind him."
RUC district commander Supt Clifford Best described Mr Folliard killing as an execution. "There is nothing to suggest at this stage that the Provisional IRA was involved. But we're pretty confident republicans were involved. It was a very professional job," he said.
A brother of Mr Folliard, a soldier in the then Ulster Defence Regiment, was critically injured when an IRA bomb exploded under his car some years ago.
Tonight relatives said there should be no retaliation. The family's minister, the Rev David Reid, said: "They do not want any family to go through what they are suffering. They are very, very upset and at a complete loss to know why this has happened. They just don't understand it."
West Tyrone Sinn Féin MP Pat Doherty said he was confident the IRA was not involved in the Strabane murder. "It was not carried out by republicans," he claimed. "I do not know who was responsible, but there was no justification for this attack."
Northern Ireland Security Minister Jane Kennedy vowed that police would hunt down the killers saying: "Those carrying out these attacks are defying the will of the vast majority of law-abiding citizens who have clearly demonstrated that they want to live in peace."
It was the third killing in Northern Ireland in just 24 hours. A part-time soldier was charged today with shooting dead a Catholic customer at a bar in Fivemiletown, Co Tyrone, and detectives questioning two men about the murder of a teenager gunned down in Craigavon, Co Armagh, have been granted another 30 hours for further interrogation.
PA