Hundreds of mourners at tended the funeral of prominent dissident loyalist Mr Frankie Curry in west Belfast on Saturday.
Although there were no obvious signs of paramilitary honours at the funeral, some leading loyalist paramilitary figures walked behind the coffin in a cortege of some 300 people. At 9.15 a.m., after a service at his mother's house on Hopewell Crescent, the remains of Mr Curry were carried in slow procession the short distance to the Shankill Road.
Mr Curry (45), a former member of the Red Hand Commando and allegedly linked to dissident group the Red Hand Defenders, was killed just yards from his mother's home on Wednesday, when a masked gunman shot him several times as he crossed wasteland.
On reaching the Shankill Road his coffin, which was draped with an Ulster flag, was placed in a funeral car for the drive to Roselawn Cemetery. Inside a large floral tribute read "A true loyalist", another "Love".
Mr John White of the Ulster Democratic Party, which has links with the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), and the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), claimed the murder was sanctioned by a mainstream loyalist group and that the UDA or UFF were not involved.
"In an area such as this, directly controlled by the paramilitaries, nothing happens without one or other of the groups' knowledge," Mr White said on Saturday.
Mr Curry was the nephew of veteran loyalist leader Mr Gusty Spence, who read the 1994 ceasefire declaration of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). According to Mr Spence representatives of the UVF assured him that the group was not involved in his nephew's murder.
However, the Red Hand Defenders has threatened "military action" against leading figures in the UVF and its political wing the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) as a result of Mr Curry's death.
Mr Curry, who served lengthy prison sentences for paramilitary offences including attempted murder, denied in recent weeks that he was the leader of the Red Hand Defenders, the group that claimed it carried out last week's murder of Lurgan solicitor Ms Rosemary Nelson.