Release of Halloween killer 'damaging North's democracy'

The decision to release loyalist killer Torrens Knight from prison is an affront to democracy which has sent shockwaves through society, a Northern Ireland Assemblyman said today.

Knight was found guilty of 12 murders in the Troubles, including those of eight people in the 1993 Greysteel massacre.

The terrorist assassin, released early on licence in 2000 but put back behind bars last year for attacking two sisters, is now free again following a decision by the Sentence Review Commission.

SDLP MLA John Dallat claimed Knight had been treated with kid gloves.

"The damage done to democracy by this decision is horrendous and it will take a great deal of convincing that Torrens Knight should be back in the community," the East Derry representative said.

"When the wider community gave their consent to the early release scheme they did it on the understanding that anyone who broke the terms would be back in jail to serve the remainder of their life sentences.

"Most have stuck to those terms but Knight hasn't and people wonder why he has got away with it."

Knight was a member of the Ulster Freedom Fighters gang that burst into the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel village, Co Derry on Halloween 1993 and opened fire.

The killings are always associated with the chilling "trick or treat" phrase shouted by one of the gunmen before they started shooting.

Knight was also convicted of the murders of four Catholic builders in the nearby town of Castlerock earlier that year.

Having served seven years in prison, he was released in 2000 as part of the terms of the Good Friday Peace Agreement.

He was locked up again after a judge last year found him guilty of punching Caroline Nicholl to the ground and kicking her before turning his fists on her sister Rosemary Sutherland in the Blackthorn bar in Coleraine.

Mr Dallat said local people were shocked and bewildered by the commission's decision to release Knight again.

"One of the most difficult things I have had to do was to ring the two sisters he savagely beat up in Coleraine in May 2008 because I was certain they had not been told and, of course, they hadn't," he added.

"Not even the police officer who dealt with the case knew he was on his way home to resume residence within one mile of one of the sisters he beat up."

A spokesman for the Sentence Review Commission said it did not comment on individual cases.