THE result of the savage history of internal feuding in the INLA can be read, like an epitaph, from the list of defendants who appeared at Belfast Crown Court in 1983 in the case based on the evidence of supergrass Harry Kirkpatrick.
Kirkpatrick's unreliability as a witness led to the case's collapse and the 30 defendants were released.
Within 10 years, half of the first defendants named on the indictment were shot dead, six as a result of internal feuding.
One was shot dead by loyalists and another, who joined the IRA, was shot by the British army.
The INLA has a propensity for savagery and for killing its own members.
It is also uninhibited about threatening journalists and writers who have exposed its activities.
The death threats persuaded two Dublin journalists to withdraw from writing a book about the organisation for the mid 1980s.
Two others, who wrote Deadly Divisions, received threats from three INLA members. Two of those three are themselves now dead.
They are Gino Gallagher, shot dead at the Falls Road labour exchange in January, and John Fennell, beaten to death in Bundoran early on Tuesday.
The reasons for the latest feud, as with previous INLA divisions, are difficult to determine.
Although the INLA is believed to have only a few dozen active members, it is thought a power struggle has been taking place since late 1994.
In Belfast members were involved counterparts and threats were issued after the IRA declared its ceasefire.
In 1994, it is understood the leadership in Belfast agreed with the IRA decision to call a ceasefire.
However, members in Dublin disagreed. When members of the Belfast leadership were later arrested other members in Belfast, led by Gino Gallagher, claimed control.
The split followed the inevitable course of such events in the INLA. Gallagher was shot dead and, barely a month later, Fennell was tracked to Bundoran and beaten to death after he left a public house on Monday night.
The INLA was created in 1975 after a split in the Official IRA. A feud took place and the first INLA leader, Seamus Costello, was shot dead in Dublin.
Further killings took place in Belfast where the Official IRA leader Billy McMillan, was shot dead by a teenage INLA member, Gerry Steenson.
He later emerged as the leader of an INLA faction which started the bloodiest internal paramilitary feud in the history of the conflict in Northern Ireland.
Steenson was responsible for two former associates, Thomas Power and Gerard O'Reilly, at a Louth hotel in early 1987.
The INLA divided into two factions the INLA (Belfast Brigade) and the INLA (Army Council).
Twelve people were killed and several injured.
The feud ended after almost two months when Steenson, who revelled in the nickname "Doctor Death", was shot dead.
Steenson, Power and O'Reilly were defendants in the Kirkpatrick case.
During this feud, Mrs Mary McGlinchey, wife of the INLA figure, Dominic McGlinchey, was shot dead while bathing her children at her home in Dundalk.
Her husband was shot dead, also in front of one of his sons, in Drogheda two years ago.
After the 1987 feud, the remaining INLA members moved into two organisations, the INLA and the Irish People's Liberation Organisation (IPLO).
The IPLO split in 1992, possibly after a dispute over the proceeds of a drugs trafficking deal. Three men were shot dead, including the former INLA spokesman, Jimmy Brown.
At the end of that year, IRA members shot dead another IPLO member and knee capped about a dozen others. The statement was issued saying the IPLO no longer existed.
After the disappearance of the IPLO, the INLA reemerged and was involved in several killings in Belfast, mostly sectarian.
It shot dead three loyalists on the Shankill Road, in June 1994, an incident which caused the killing of six Catholics, in retaliation, at the public house in Loughinisland, Co Down, a week later.
The INLA leaders agreed to abide by the IRA ceasefire in August 1994, although last year Gino Gallagher gave interviews to journalists in which he suggested that dissident IRA members, opposed to the ceasefire, were being attracted to the INLA.
Police on both sides of the Border still fear the INLA is capable of acts of violence in Northern Ireland which could restart the conflict there.