Provisionals using cover names to mask violence, says unionist

A unionist MP today expressed concern that the Provisional IRA or dissident republicans could be using a cover name for the organisation to allow vigilante violence to take place in the North.

David Simpson, the Democratic Unionist MP for Upper Bann, voiced alarm at a claim received by a Co Armagh newspaper that a group called Direct Action Against Drugs (DAAD) were behind the savage beating of a man last month in a flat in Lurgan by a masked gang wielding baseball bats.