Men and women are being paid £2,000 (€2,900) a time to go through with sham marriages to foreign nationals in the North, it was revealed today.

LOYALIST killer Torrens Knight was a double agent shielded by the Special Branch before he murdered eight people in the Greysteel massacre, SDLP Assembly member John Dallat claimed yesterday.

A Sinn Féin official who had charges dropped against him over a republican spy ring at Stormont claimed today that police arrested him as part of a campaign to save David Trimble’s political career.

A convicted loyalist murderer, released early under the Good Friday Agreement, was tonight facing the prospect of serving out eight life sentences for his involvement in a 1993 atrocity, after being convicted of taking part in a knife attack at a football match.

The nationalist SDLP was rocked today by the resignation from the party of one of its councillors.