February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Although the UDA is, technically, on ceasefire, it was feared its members would carry out their threat to murder him on his release from jail, had he remained in Belfast.
The British government was unable to keep him in jail any longer as two-thirds of his sentence for directing terrorism had been served.
Adair was flown out by RAF helicopter to avoid threatened assassination attempts by former associates — in stark contrast to his last release, when he took part in a triumphant cavalcade to the Shankill where a street party lasted for days.
He was met and interviewed by a representative of the Greater Manchester Police when he arrived before joining his family, who settled in Bolton after being forced out during a loyalist paramilitary feud two years ago.
His wife, Gina, is suffering from cancer and is being treated in Manchester. The group of former UDA men in Bolton are known as the “Bolton Wanderers” after the local football team.
Chief Superintendent Dave Lea of Greater Manchester Police warned Adair that criminal behavior would not be tolerated. He said his force would act “robustly” to deal with any criminal or anti-social behavior.
Adair was expelled by the UDA leadership in late 2002 after it was believed he had played a role in the murder of fellow loyalist John Gregg from behind bars. Both men were vying to lead the UDA at the time.
It is the third time Adair has been released from prison since his initial conviction in 1995. He was previously returned to prison for breaching license conditions in August 2000 after being released from prison under the terms of the Good Friday agreement a year earlier.
On May 15 2002, he was released from prison having reached the 50 percent point of his sentence. Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, Paul Murphy, ordered Adair to be sent back to prison in January 2003 at the height of a vicious power-struggle between his C Company faction and the rest of the UDA.
He was said to have been involved in extortion, drug dealing and fomenting the feud. Days later, Gregg, another musclebound, far-right member of the UDA inner council, was shot dead near Belfast docks as he returned from a Glasgow Rangers football match.
Members of Adair’s brigade blamed for the killing were later routed and forced to flee their Shankill Road power base. Adair’s teenage son Jonathan was sentenced last year for possessing heroin and crack cocaine in England.
Adair, who began his career as a skinhead and Nazi sympathizer, grew a reputation as a sectarian murderer. He would boast of the number of Catholic civilians he had murdered and was quoted saying “The only good Taig is a dead Taig”.
The end of his career came when police officers, to whom he would routinely boast of his exploits, recorded conversations with him that were used in court to convict him.
He was regarded within republicanism as a tool of British counter-intelligence, who allowed him free rein during the late 1980s and ’90s so long as he remained of use in targeting North Belfast nationalists.
Among those his UDA gang were reported to have targeted were Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, who was later murdered, Gerry Adams, and the former Sinn Fein lord mayor of Belfast, Alex Maskey. A British agent, Brian Nelson, was acting as the gang’s intelligence agent and — on directions from British military intelligence — was directing its guns on republicans.
Adair and his cohorts apparently lived a charmed life, able to amass large sums of money by drug-dealing with impunity.
SDLP justice spokesperson Alban Maginness said nationalists would welcome the fact that Adair had relocated to England.
“I understand he got a ride to Manchester on a military helicopter; let’s hope it was a one-way ticket,” he said. “Johnny Adair brought fear, terror, death and destruction to the nationalist community of Belfast, and eventually to his own community. If he were to be released here, there would be another round of feuding and the violence would be turned against nationalists again.
“Unfortunately, Adair leaves behind him a sorry legacy of drug-dealing and organized crime. He represents all the people who cannot leave the Troubles behind, who try to maintain their power and lifestyles by turning to rackets.”