Body found during search for missing UDA man

POLICE hunting for missing loyalist Alan McCullough found a body on the outskirts of north Belfast yesterday.

The find was made outside Mallusk, Co Antrim, after workmen tipped off police that they had spotted what appeared to be a body in a shallow grave. Police later confirmed they had found a body.

Police have been searching for the 21-year-old for over a week after he was driven away from his home in the company of senior members of the Ulster Defence Association and expressed fears he had been murdered by the UDA.

Chief Inspector Jim Bailey said it would be some time before they finally confirmed the identity of the body forensic examination of the area would take "the next day or two".

Chief Constable Hugh Orde said the location of the body "makes it entirely possible that it is Mr McCullough, but we can't confirm that until we are sure."

"What is very important is that we have been treating this as a murder investigation from very early on even though no body was found.

"That's how seriously we have been taking this."

McCullough, a former associate of jailed terror chief Johnny Adair, vanished after the two paramilitaries called at his home in the Lower Shankill area of west Belfast on Wednesday last week.

He had been among those from Adair's notorious C Company forced by the mainstream UDA leadership to flee Northern Ireland in February during a brutal feud which claimed four lives.

Along with Adair's wife Gina, political frontman John White and others, McCullough fled to Scotland on an overnight ferry after being driven out of the Lower Shankill following the murder of Adair's bitter rival John Gregg.

They were told they would be killed if they returned but McCullough believed he had negotiated a lifting of the death sentence and returned.

Less than two weeks later he disappeared.

A number of people have been arrested for questioning about the disappearance but all have been released without charge.

Detective Inspector Keith McCoubrey said the body was found shortly after 8am and it was too early to say how the person died.

He confirmed that police had been in contact with the McCullough family.

"Family liaison officers have been in contact with the family this morning to inform them that we have found a body but we also had to point out that as yet we cannot confirm that it is Alan."