Playing with his children on his living-room floor, Andrew Peden could be any normal father. But then you look down and see two stumps where his legs should be. Andrew has no legs. The UVF blew them away eight months ago.

"They have ruined my family's life," he says. "I will never work again. My wife had to give up her job in the bakery to look after me.

"But it's not being able to do things with my three kids that really breaks my heart. I can't bring them to the park or take them fishing or swimming and I loved doing those things."

At Christmas his daughter Shaunie (5) told Santa she didn't want any presents herself, just legs for her daddy.

Andrew Peden (34) has lived all his life in the loyalist Glencairn Estate, just off the Shankill Road in Belfast. One Saturday morning last May, a car pulled up on the street beside him.

He was abducted and taken to a block of flats where he was blindfolded and had his hands tied. He was questioned about a row over a woman the previous night between some of his friends and a group of UVF men.

He was badly beaten. "I tried to jump through the window but it was double-glazed and didn't break." After 12 hours he was taken outside. He was unconscious by then. His assailants shot him in the legs. "You could have put your fist through the holes," says his wife, Linda.

Andrew was unconscious for five weeks. When he awoke in hospital, one leg had been amputated and he was told the other would have to come off too. He cried his eyes out. He was so weak he suffered heart attacks twice when surgeons tried to amputate the second leg.

He was in hospital for seven months. Several men were questioned about the attack but not charged.

Linda has met UVF representatives who, she says, now accept her husband was innocent and not even involved in the argument. "But what good is that after he has been left with half a body?"

She is furious that there have been no political repercussions for the UVF's political wing, the Progressive Unionist Party. "They're sitting in the Stormont Assembly on big salaries while our world has been destroyed."

The skin on Andrew's hands and posterior is raw from crawling about the house. It is his only way of getting around. He has fallen down the stairs three times. Social services say structural reasons prevent the installation of a lift.

Andrew's artificial legs are due to arrive next week. But the doctors have warned it will be painful learning to walk since his legs have been amputated above the knee.

He still suffers immense pain, both phantom and real. He takes 42 tablets a day. He has constant nightmares about what happened and wakes up screaming.

The Pedens have been told it could be five years before they receive any compensation.

"The authorities have totally failed us," says Linda. "They haven't delivered justice to the perpetrators and they aren't even providing for our day-to-day needs. They have just left us to get on with our lives as though nothing has happened."

Over in nationalist west Belfast, the front room of Maureen Kearney's home in Twinbrook is a shrine to her son Andrew (33). She has burned a candle in the room since he bled to death in a Provisional IRA so-called punishment shooting seven months ago.

The trophies and medals he won at football, darts and snooker adorn the mantlepiece. There are photographs everywhere of a tall, good-looking man with a big smile and a mop of black hair.

"Wherever he went, the girls fell for him," says Mrs Kearney (65).

Andrew had worked at a variety of jobs - van driver, kitchen hand and labourer. He had a two-week-old daughter, Caitlin Rose, with his partner Lisa Darragh.

They lived in the Fianna Flats in the New Lodge in north Belfast. Andrew had three children from a previous marriage.

Ask anyone who knew him and they all say the same - Andrew was the life and soul of the party. "He did everything with a passion," says his mother. "His feet never touched the ground. He bounced when he walked.

"He loved a bet. If he won, he would be round with a few pounds for his father and myself. He was always raising money for charity. Every time I saw him, he tortured me to buy tickets for this or that."

Andrew was known as someone who could handle himself in a fight. "He never went looking for a fight but he never walked away from one either," says his mother.

"He was bullied as a child so he grew up determined to stand up for himself or anyone else who had been wronged."

Late in 1997, a prominent Provisional IRA "commander" in north Belfast, whose name is known to The Irish Times, hit a woman during an argument in a pub. This woman was related to Andrew's partner Lisa.

On July 5th last year, Andrew was in a pub on the Falls Road when the IRA man threatened the woman's son. "Andrew stood up to intervene and the IRA man looked him in the eye and said `I hear you're a hard man'," says Mrs Kearney.

"Andrew asked him if he wanted to find out how hard he was, or if he hit only women and children. They stepped outside and Andrew knocked him out cold in minutes. He was as strong as an ox."

The IRA man had been publicly humiliated. His friends shouted threats as Andrew walked away.

He knew he was in trouble when he heard rumours over the next few days that he was dealing in drugs. "He didn't even smoke, he was so health-conscious. The IRA was just preparing the ground to kill him," says his mother.

The RUC has categorically stated that Andrew had no drugs involvement. Shortly after midnight on July 19th, a fortnight after the fight, eight IRA men burst into Andrew's flat as he sat on the sofa, his baby daughter sleeping on his chest.

They smashed the telephone. One held Lisa in the flat as the rest dragged Andrew onto the stairwell.

"There were three shots," says Mrs Kearney. "When the gang left, Lisa rushed out. Andrew was sitting in a pool of blood in the lift. He had been shot in the legs. A bullet had struck an artery. He was unconscious."

The couple's immediate neighbours had heard the shots and were too frightened to open their doors. The IRA had not only smashed Lisa's telephone but also jammed the lift with a pole. She had to run down 16 flights of stairs, carrying the baby, to ring an ambulance.

When the ambulance arrived at the hospital Andrew was already dead. Mrs Kearney has since met senior members of the Provisionals to discuss the shooting.

"They told me it had been sanctioned by the `officer commanding' the Belfast Brigade, but it went wrong and there was no intention to kill Andrew.

"I don't believe that. I think they deliberately broke the phone and jammed the lift to delay help. A surgeon at the hospital said that by using a .45 revolver, a heavy calibre weapon, right against the calf of his leg, they had aimed to kill.

"They just didn't shoot him in the head because they wanted it to look like an accident."

Several men questioned about the shooting were released without charge.

MRS Kearney is a lifelong republican. Her entire family, including Andrew, voted Sinn Fein. She burned a candle in the window during the 1981 HBlock hunger strike in support of the IRA prisoners.

"I was always very critical of the RUC," she says. "But they would have treated Andrew far more humanely than the IRA did."

The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, has visited her.

"Gerry Adams is a politician. He didn't really say much but he was charming. He hugged and kissed me and told me to try to pull myself together. How would he feel if his son was murdered and somebody said that?"

Mrs Kearney is seeking legal advice on the possibility of pursuing Sinn Fein through the courts for compensation for her son's death.

"Somebody has to be made accountable. He left four wee children behind. If republicans get a clip around the ear from the RUC or British Army, they're claiming money.

"Gerry Adams is after £10,000 for being held up for four hours by the RUC on the Ormeau Road. If he thinks he deserves £10,000 for that, then what is my son's life worth?"

She holds up a gold hooped earring her son was wearing when he was killed. "That's the only thing of Andrew's the police had to give me.

"The IRA dragged him from his home wearing nothing but his football shorts. They left him to die in a filthy, urine-soaked lift with the blood gushing out of him. Nobody treats my child like that and gets away with it. I didn't rear him for that."