Victim's brother calls for Stone to return to Jail

Last updated at 14:54 24 November 2006


The brother of one of Michael Stone's victims who shook hands with the killer in a controversial display of reconciliation insisted today he must go back to jail.

Roddy Hackett, whose brother Dermot was gunned down in 1987, came face-to-face with the notorious murderer during a televised meeting earlier this year.

In it, Stone admitted his part in ambushing his brother, a bread delivery man, as he was going to work outside Omagh almost two decades ago.

Programme makers billed the encounter as a landmark on the road to conflict resolution and healing, though critics questioned Stone's sincerity.

Television viewers watched Dermot Hackett's widow, Sylvia, flee the studio in tears after shaking hands with Stone.

Mr Hackett said after today's security alert the loyalist paramilitary icon would have to go back to prison and serve out his life sentences for

murder.

"If that's the route he's chosen again he's sealed his own fate," he said.

"If he has broken his conditions he knows quite well himself what he was doing. As far as I'm concerned let the punishment suit the crime.

"He has to go back to prison. Let him go back now."

Stone was "possibly a bit of a psychopath" and appeared to be acting out a "death wish" when he broke through security at the Northern Ireland assembly, according to Mr Hackett.

He suggested the television encounter with himself and his brother's widow may have deeply affected the infamous killer.

"I'd say we might have rattled him a bit," he said.

"Maybe the pressure has got to him and he's just flipped his lid. It's quite possible. You wouldn't know what people have been saying to him even in his own community.

"Something, somewhere along the line has flashed him off again," he continued.

"I don't even know about his own community, what way they think of him now. There was a time when he was hero-worshipped but he's just a non-entity now.

"Maybe he decided it's time to build his ego back up again, get back into the limelight. A foolish way to do it. I'd just love to know what the hell his reasoning was behind it."

Mr Hackett was left doubting the truth of Stone's assurances that he had not directly murdered his brother but was an accomplice.

"I was quite willing to accept that he hadn't shot my brother. This would put a doubt in your mind now whether he did. You don't know with him."

Most watched News videos