Loyalist killer paid £50,000 a year after jail

LOYALIST mass murderer and suspected police agent Torrens Knight was paid £50,000 (€73,186) a year after being released from jail, it was claimed yesterday.

Cash was lodged in a bank account set up for the sectarian mass killer, informed sources said.

Staff at the branch were allegedly told Knight, responsible for the pub massacre at Greysteel, Co Derry, on Halloween 1993, was an engineer working for a Scottish-based firm. He was on a £50,000 annual salary, it was claimed.

“The only engineering he ever did was constructing pipe bombs,” a source said.

The mysterious arrangement at the branch ended after two payments, when management started to ask questions, it has been claimed.

Nuala O’Loan, the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman, is examining allegations that the special branch shielded Knight before the horrific attack on the Rising Sun bar.

He was part of an Ulster Freedom Fighters unit that walked into the packed pub, shouted “trick or treat” and opened fire. By the time they had finished, 19 people were wounded. Eight died from their injuries, seven of them Catholics.

Knight was jailed for life for those murders and the killing of four Catholic workmen in Castlerock, Co Derry, seven months earlier.

Ms O’Loan’s probe is centred on allegations that a gun later used at Greysteel was moved before police could recover it. Her investigators have been told high-powered UFF rifles were discovered by anglers following the Castlerock shootings.

Police were alerted and carried out a failed search for the guns along the banks of Agivey River at Hunter’s Mill, near Aghadowey, Co Derry, it is claimed. The Ombudsman’s office has received information that the weapons were moved by a special branch man to protect the identity of Knight, an alleged double agent.

He was released from jail in July 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. It was during this period that payments were allegedly made to him. Since then Knight is believed to have moved to England.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland said: “Any allegation of wrongdoing on the part of an individual officer should be reported to the Police Ombudsman so a proper investigation can be carried out.

“We never comment on whether someone has been or is an informant.”