UDA ‘crucifies’ Catholic man

They also beat him with baseball bats studded with nails, smashing his face and leaving him with two broken legs, puncture wounds, multiple lacerations and bruising.
A UDA source in South Belfast admitted Monday that loyalists were responsible and said it was a reaction to carjackings in the area. He denied the UDA had orchestrated the attack.
The man was so badly beaten that his father only identified him through a tattoo on his body bearing the name of the man’s 3-year-old daughter, Chloe.
The beating of the man, 23-year-old Harry McCartan, who had just been released from jail for car crimes convictions, was “an act of pure evil,” according to local politicians.
He was found Saturday morning nailed to the fence in the mainly loyalist Seymour Hill area of Dunmurry, south of Belfast. Loyalist wall graffiti reading “All joy-riders will be crucified” and “Crucify all hoods” was painted in the district after the attack.
It’s thought that although the attack was not motivated by sectarianism alone, it played a part in the crucifixion theme meted out against the man when the assailants discovered he is Catholic.
McCartan, from the nationalist Poleglass area, was taken to hospital semiconscious with his hands still impaled on fencing after fire-fighters cut him free.
His father, Henry, said when his son was found in a lane he was unrecognizable, bleeding from his eyes and ears. On Sunday, McCartan underwent an operation lasting almost five hours to remove the nails from his hands and he is said to be in a stable condition.
The Ulster Unionist MP for Lisburn, Jeffrey Donaldson, said most people in the area deplored the attack and he appealed for anyone who knew anything about it to contact the police immediately.
Alliance Party deputy leader Eileen Bell said: “Those behind this are barbaric cowards. No one has the right to take the law into their own hands like this, no matter what someone has done in the past.”
Local SDLP assembly member Patricia Lewsley also condemned the attack. “It was quite barbaric and I’m sure the majority of people who live in Seymour Hill are horrified that this has happened on their doorstep,” she said.
The police said they had ruled out a sectarian motive and believed vigilantes carried out the attack. Superintendent Gerry Murray said: “I have never come across anything so barbaric. People must have heard screaming and a commotion.”
Detectives are examining a BMW car containing two blood-stained baseball bats which was stolen in the Dunmurry area early on Saturday morning. It was later found in Anderstonstown. It’s thought the loyalists dumped the car there in a bid to blame republicans for the assault.
Meanwhile, the Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, has hailed the “positive contribution” of the Loyalist Commission after the paramilitary umbrella group blamed republicans for collapsing Stormont and warned politicians over contacts with Dublin.