Stone: Incursion 'saved peace process'
Loyalist killer Michael Stone has claimed at a Belfast court that his incursion at Stormont two years ago saved the peace process.
But a prosecution lawyer accused him of being an ego-centric fantasist who had planned to murder Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to propel himself back into the limelight.
Michael Stone faces fourteen charges of possessing explosives, knives, and a hatchet and of attempting to murder the two Sinn Féin leaders.
Stone claimed his intervention at Stormont in 2006 had actually saved the peace process, with the disruption giving the DUP and Sinn Féin the breathing space to reach agreement before finally entering government together in May of the following year.
He said the two parties shared joint responsibility for the Troubles with their words and deeds during the conflict and that his act was designed to expose their hypocrisy and spur them towards a settlement.
“I took lives for God and Ulster and for Ian Paisley and that is a fact,” he said of his life as a paramilitary.
“What I was saying (at Stormont) was big man (Paisley) you’re as guilty as the Shinners so get in there and do the business.”
Stone claimed hardliners within the DUP were set to oppose the appointment of Martin McGuiness as Stormont deputy first minister on the day of the incident and that his actions had prevented them from destabilising the process.
He added that he personally wanted to see Sinn Féin in government and agreed that it was an occasion for celebration when republicans entered office with the DUP in 2007.
Mr Adair rejected this explanation as nonsense. He said Stone was a publicity-hungry murderer who was still motivated by a desire to kill the Sinn Féin members.
“I suggest to you you’re an egocentric killer with a penchant for publicity who was completing unfinished business,” he said.
After his release from prison in 1998 Stone reinvented himself as a painter and attracted significant media attention as a result.
Mr Adair argued that by 2006 he was no longer in demand from TV and newspapers and didn’t like it.
“Your light was waning, you were becoming a nobody, and you wanted to propel yourself back into the public glare,” he told Stone.
“And your final act, killing Adams and McGuiness, that was what it was all about.”
