Michael Stone (loyalist) - Release

Release

On 24 July 2000, Stone was released from prison under the Good Friday Peace Agreement of 1998 that ruled that those convicted of terrorist crimes were to be set free. The jubilant and triumphant scenes that fellow loyalists greeted Stone with upon his release angered many Irish Nationalists. Paramilitaries of both sides were often treated as heroes upon their release and this often caused anger, particularly among the victims' relatives.

Stone had been living in East Belfast, London and Spain with his girlfriend Suzanne Cooper until the events of 24 November 2006. In 2001 Stone and Ms Cooper exchanged bullet-proof jackets as Christmas gifts. He has nine children from two previous marriages, and three grand children.

Since leaving prison Stone had concentrated on work in the community and being an artist – a hobby he began in the Maze. His paintings are vivid and not so much political as topical. They fetch between a few hundred and a few thousand pounds each. Stone published his autobiography titled None Shall Divide Us, in which he claimed that he had received "specialist assistance" from RUC operatives in carrying out the cemetery killings. A second book and the auctioning of the jacket he wore at the Milltown Cemetery at a Scottish loyalist club for £10,000 have brought forward legislation to ban former convicted paramilitaries released through the Northern Ireland Peace Process from profiting from their crimes.

In March 2002 it was reported in the Sunday Life that Stone and Cooper had fled Northern Ireland for France following death threats from loyalists opposed to the peace process. The aim of those behind the threats – reported as being from the Orange Volunteers – was the eventual destruction of the Good Friday Agreement and the end of Northern Ireland's troubled peace process. Following time in Birmingham, Stone returned to East Belfast.

Stone featured in the BBC2 television series Facing the Truth mediated by Archbishop Desmond Tutu where he met relatives of a victim of loyalist violence. Sylvia Hackett talked with Stone, who was convicted of murdering her husband Dermot, a Catholic delivery man. Although he previously admitted to the murder, Stone told his victim's widow that he had no direct responsibility, having been withdrawn after planning the attack. At the end of their meeting she forced herself to walk over to Stone and shake his hand – when he placed a second hand on hers, she recoiled and fled from the room.

In November 2006, he claimed that in the 1980s he had been "three days" away from killing the then leader of the Greater London Council and former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, over his invitations to Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to visit him in London. The plot was cancelled over fears that it had been infiltrated by Special Branch detectives.