Senior UDA man admits members are drug dealers

Further divisions are emerging within the UDA after a leading loyalist admitted that some of the group's members are dealing in drugs.

Last week, internal tensions were heightened when a splinter group from the same organisation decommissioned a small number of guns.

Now a leading member of the Ulster Political Research Group, the political wing of the mainstream UDA, has admitted that some of its members are drug dealers.

Frankie Gallagher was speaking after a youth committed suicide after taking an overdose of horse sedatives supplied by a UDA dealer in north Belfast.

He called those responsible "scum" and said the UDA leadership opposed drug dealing.