A DUP member of a local policing partnership has endorsed a tribute to a notorious UDA chief shot dead in a loyalist feud.
Mid and East Antrim councillor Tyler Hoey, who sits on the district’s Policing and Community Safety Partnership, ‘loved’ a post glorifying murdered UDA member John Gregg.
Mr Hoey’s actions come just days after former DUP leader Arlene Foster raised concerns about the “glorification of terrorism” and suggested new laws were needed for political leaders.
Gregg, a former UDA brigadier in South East Antrim, was gunned down in an internal feud on February 1, 2003.
He and fellow loyalist Robert ‘Rab’ Carson were targeted by members of Johnny Adair’s C Company UDA unit as they travelled in a taxi in the docks area of Belfast.
In 1983 Gregg was part of a hit team that shot and injured former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams,
Gregg is an ex-member of the Cloughfern Young Conquerors Flute Band, which is based in Rathcoole, on the outskirts of north Belfast.
Both loyalists have now been glorified in a new profile picture posted on the band’s Facebook page to coincide with the 22nd anniversary of the deadly attack that claimed their lives.
More than 100 people have ‘loved’ the graphic, including Mr Hoey, while dozens more have liked it.
Mr Hoey caused controversy last year when he liked a social media post praising the 1993 Greysteel ‘trick or treat’ atrocity, during which eight people were killed, when a UDA gang opened fire in the Rising Sun Bar in Co Derry.
At the time a DUP election candidate, Mr Hoey previously worked as a party canvasser in north Antrim.
Former DUP leader Arlene Foster last week said new laws were needed for political leaders who pay tribute to paramilitary figures.
Her remarks in the House of Lords came after Sinn Féin’s Stormont leader Michelle O’Neill attended a commemoration for three IRA members killed in Co Derry.
Mark Thompson of campaign group Relatives for Justice said: “The DUP need to make their mind up, the ... double standards need to stop.
“People do have a right to remember and communities have a right to remember their people that were killed.
A spokesman for the Policing Board said: “A policy is in place which governs the process for dealing with any alleged breach of the Policing and Community Safety Partnership (PCSP) Code of Conduct for political and independent members.”
The DUP and Department of Justice were contacted.
