Adair calls for unionists to disarm
Loyalists in the North should decommission their weapons and disband their terror machines, one of their most notorious former leaders said tonight.
Johnny Adair made the call ahead of tomorrow's deadline for power-sharing between Protestants and Catholics in the province.
The infamous west Belfast Ulster Defence Association commander was forced out of the organisation in 2002 after a dispute but said IRA disarmament should force his former colleagues to follow suit.
"The UDA are just a thuggish, criminal organisation," he told the BBC's Radio Five. "They don't need to be there, they need to go away."
"There is no threat to the community, there is no threat to Ulster, so therefore go away."
The shaven-headed body builder served two-thirds of a 16-year term for directing terrorism through the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), a cover name for the UDA.
Adair was first released after the 1998 Good Friday peace accord but was later sent back to prison after becoming involved in criminality again.
The organisation targeted Catholics, but the veteran ringleader insisted that only republicans and sympathisers were attacked during the years of violence.
He has written a biography about his spell as commander of C Company in west Belfast's loyalist heartland of the Shankill Road.
C Company was behind around 40 murders in the Belfast area but Adair claimed he had never murdered anybody or dealt drugs and said he was virtually penniless.
"My message to the people of Northern Ireland is enjoy the peace and I hope it lasts. To my enemies, watch this space, I will return," he added.
He is living in Scotland and has also been based in Bolton in the north of England.
Current UDA leaders including Jackie McDonald and Tommy Kirkham have supported political steps in the past, although the UDA has no elected representatives in the Assembly.
"I think it is a shame, the fact that they have not decommissioned a bullet or a gun to date and the fact that they are still extorting, that they are still...selling drugs," Adair said.
"I believe that they should have gone away a long time ago."
