27 Facts About Mo Courtney

William Samuel "Mo" Courtney was born on 8 July 1963 and is a former Ulster Defence Association activist.

Mo Courtney was a leading figure in Johnny Adair's C Company, one of the most active sections of the UDA, before later falling out with Adair and serving as West Belfast brigadier.

Mo Courtney had a reputation as something of a petty thief and even suffered a punishment beating from more senior members of the UDA for a spate of burglaries on the Shankill.

Mo Courtney was sent out as a gunman and was allegedly active in killing by around 1987.

Mo Courtney was questioned in regards to the 1989 murder of Pat Finucane in 2002.

Mo Courtney argued that too little was being done by the movement in terms of killing republicans as the leaders were too happy to sit back and become rich from extortion and racketeering.

Mo Courtney was involved in conspiracies to overthrow the UDA leadership.

Mo Courtney was jailed in 1991 for robbery, theft and hijacking, and soon became a leading figure within the Maze prison.

Mo Courtney gained a reputation as a fearsome fighter and took a leading role in the battles with the Ulster Volunteer Force during the internecine loyalist feud between Adair's men and the UVF in 2000.

On 19 August 2000 when the feud broke out fully during the "loyalist day of culture" held on the Shankill Road, Mo Courtney was identified as one of three UDA gunmen who shot at UVF members who had barricaded themselves in the "Rex Bar".

In late 2002 when Adair and his ally John White were expelled from the UDA Mo Courtney remained loyal to "Mad Dog" and was the main guard at Adair's Shankill Road house, known colloquially as the "Big Brother House" after the setting of the then popular TV series.

Mo Courtney managed to avoid the attack after being warned about it by his C Company colleague Donald Hodgen.

Mo Courtney subsequently took these to the "Heather Social Club", the headquarters of those on the Shankill loyal to the mainstream UDA, where he affirmed his split from Adair and his new loyalty to McDonald.

Mo Courtney denounced Adair as a "treacherous bastard" for the attempted hit against him.

Adair's supporters fled the Shankill a few days later, and in a public show of loyalty to the new UDA regime, Mo Courtney was filmed by television cameras defacing a mural Adair had ordered painted extolling the friendship between the UDA and the Loyalist Volunteer Force.

Mo Courtney regained his influence within the UDA and replaced "Fat Jackie" Thompson as brigadier of the West Belfast UDA.

McCullough promised Mo Courtney to tell him the whereabouts of a huge haul of drugs stashed by C Company as well as the address of Gina Adair, whose house McCullough even shot at to prove his loyalty to the new leadership.

Mo Courtney had been discovered in Carrickfergus where he had gone into hiding.

Not long after this, in January 2007, Mo Courtney was the victim of a savage attack on the Shankill Road by an old UVF rival.

At the retrial Mo Courtney was given an eight-year prison sentence after confessing to manslaughter.

Mo Courtney has continued to be linked to the Finucane murder and in 2007, whilst serving his sentence for his involvement in McCullough's death, he was named as one of the two gunmen to kill Finucane in an affidavit filed in a Belfast court by Metropolitan Police officer Detective Chief Inspector Graham Taylor, who was at the time heading the investigation into the killing.

Mo Courtney was released from prison and returned to his home in the Glencairn area to the north of the Shankill.

However, in 2013 Mo Courtney was convicted of the assault of Tracey Coulter at the offices of the Lower Shankill Community Association.

Mo Courtney publicly accused the UDA of being behind the attack.

In December 2013 Mo Courtney was again brought before the courts, to face charges of harassing Coulter in the aftermath of his previous conviction, as well as threatening to kill campaigner Raymond McCord, who was with Mo Courtney during the alleged incident.

Mo Courtney was found guilty of threatening to kill McCord, although a similar charge relating to Coulter was dismissed.

Mo Courtney was widely reported as one of the leading figures in the conspiracy and in early 2014 UDA leaders approached Matt Kincaid, offering him the chance to re-integrate the West Belfast Brigade with the wider UDA if he expelled Mo Courtney and Jim Spence.