A man being questioned in connection with the murders of the three Quinn children has been released without charge, police said yesterday. The man was released from police custody on Tuesday night, it has emerged. Detectives are still questioning another man about the murders of Richard (11), Mark (10) and Jason Quinn (9), who died in a sectarian petrol bomb attack on their Carnany Park home in Ballymoney, Co Antrim on Sunday.
Earlier Det Chief Supt Hamilton Houston, who is heading the murder inquiry, renewed his appeal for information about the attack. He emphatically denied that there was any substance to suggestions by some Orangemen that the murders were not sectarian. Items removed from the children's home confirmed it had been petrol-bombed, he said. Neither of the men being questioned was connected to the Quinn family, he added.
The parish priest of the Church of Our Lady and St Patrick, where funeral Mass was held for the Quinn children on Tuesday, said the family were "very hurt" by the suggestions. "They are carrying the great cross of the loss of the boys and this is an added burden that they are being asked to carry," Father Peter Forde said yesterday.
Father Forde said he believed "extreme loyalists, if I can use that term, are perhaps pursuing an agenda different from the moderate people of the town" and that they were perhaps "throwing mud which they hope will stick".
Meanwhile, the level of violence and disorder was at its lowest level since the Drumcree standoff started, according to police figures released yesterday. For the first time in nine days there were no hijackings.
"There is an identifiable reduction in overall public order incidents," an RUC spokesman said. Other than violence at Drumcree there were relatively few incidents reported overnight on Tuesday and early yesterday morning. There was only one attack on police, and that was at Drumcree.
An Orange Hall in north Antrim sustained scorch damage in a petrol bomb attack yesterday. It is the fourth attack on Orange Halls in two days. In Craigavon, Co Armagh, two lorries and three cars were damaged in an arson attack on a garage and car breaker's at Bluestone Business Park. Three men and a juvenile appeared at a special sitting of Craigavon Magistrates' Court yesterday after they were arrested following violence at Drumcree. Police recovered a number of items, including two crossbows, catapults, and petrol bomb-making materials and fireworks after a search of Drumcree field early yesterday. More than 100 families have left their homes since the beginning of the Drumcree standoff, double the number reported in the same two-week period last July. A spokesman for the Housing Executive said 107 families had contacted it to be rehoused.
"Most of the cases have been in the Belfast area and in the north-east of Northern Ireland such as Ballymoney, Antrim and Carrickfergus, and Portadown and Lurgan have also been affected," he said. The North's Security Minister, Mr Adam Ingram, has confirmed that some of the additional British troops sent to Northern Ireland last week were returning to Britain. In a statement last night, the British army said the decision to send back 400 soldiers of the First Battalion of the King's Regiment was "made possible by the improved security situation".