TORRENS KNIGHT, the loyalist gunman who was convicted of the Greysteel killings at Halloween in 1993, has been released from prison.
Knight, an Ulster Freedom Fighters member, was serving a sentence for 12 murders. Eight of these counts were in connection with the notorious “trick or treat” killings at the Rising Sun bar in the Co Derry village, when the killers shouted the traditional Halloween call before opening fire. Knight was also convicted of another four murders in Castlerock, Co Derry, earlier that year.
Knight was freed on licence in 2000 following the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998 and the programme of phased prisoner releases. However, he was sent back to prison having been deemed to have broken the terms of his licence after his involvement in the beating of two sisters, Rosemary Sutherland and Caroline McNicholl, in May 2008.
He has now been released for a second time following a Sentences Review Commission report.
The decision has been sharply criticised by the SDLP. East Derry Assembly member and Stormont deputy speaker John Dallat said: “Under the early release scheme there has been a variety of procedures followed. In other words, there’s no standardisation.
“Some have had their licences revoked immediately even before court cases; others have had them suspended. But this one has been particularly bizarre, and it raises a whole range of questions as to why Torrens Knight, the Greysteel killer, has got kid glove treatment.
“The damage done to democracy by this decision is horrendous and it will take a great deal of convincing that Torrens Knight should be back in the community,” he continued.
“When the wider community gave their consent to the early release scheme, they did it on the understanding that anyone who broke the terms would be back in jail to serve the remainder of their life sentences.
“Most have stuck to those terms, but Knight hasn’t, and people wonder why he has got away with it.”