A loyalist suspected of planning a major terrorist atrocity is believed to be helping orchestrate a campaign of pipe bomb attacks to force Catholics to leave their homes in Northern Ireland, it emerged tonight.
The man was questioned but never charged with a gun attack on a pub near Derry when eight customers were killed in 1993.
He comes from north Antrim and according to authoritative security sources, belongs to the UDA which has been linked to widespread sectarian intimidation in several towns and villages, including Bushmills where virtually every Catholic family has now left fearing for their lives.
Sinn Féin's Mr Mitchel McLaughlin today blamed the UDA for attacks on two Catholic families in Co Derry overnight.
He said the pipe bomb attacks on the families, who live in mainly Protestant areas of Coleraine in Co Derry, were part of a "carefully orchestrated campaign".
He called on the perpetrators to "desist before there is a tragedy" and injury to innocent people.
In one attack a woman and her two children aged eight and 14 escaped uninjured after a bomb was thrown through the kitchen window of their home in Quickthorn Place in Harper's Hill.
It failed to explode and was later removed by a British army bomb disposal unit.
In the other attack a pipe bomb was thrown through the livingroom window of a house in Woodburn Crescent in Ballysally.
A couple who were in the room watching television managed to escape before the device exploded.
Their two children, aged two and four, were asleep upstairs.
The RUC believes the attacks were sectarian.
The loyalist believed to be helping direct the campaign was questioned about a UDA attack when masked gunmen opened fire inside the Catholic-owned Rising Sun bar/restaurant in Greysteel outside Derry in October 1993.
Four men were later jailed for life, but because of insufficient evidence he was never charged.
He and at least one other man were suspected of ordering the slaughter.
Additional reporting by PA