Mo Courtney

Mo Courtney
Birth name	William Courtney
Born	July 1963 Belfast, Northern Ireland
Allegiance	Ulster Freedom Fighters
Rank	Brigadier
Unit	C Company, 2nd Battalion Shankill Road, West Belfast Brigade
Conflict	The Troubles

William "Mo" Courntey (born July 1963 in Belfast^[1]) was an Ulster Defence Association (UDA) activist. He was a leading figure in Johnny Adair's C Company, one of the most active sections of the UDA, before later falling out with Adair and serving as West Belfast brigadier.

Early years

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Courtney was part in a gang of teenagers from Belfast's Shankill Road and nearby districts who spent their days near the Buffs Club on Century Street in the nearby Oldpark district. This gang included Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair with whom Courtney formed a friendship.^[2] The gang as a group had joined C8, one of around eighteen teams of 30 to 60 men that made up C Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, over a period of several months in 1984.^[3] Courtney and Adair became closer as the 1980s went on and on 23 November 1985 they attended the "Ulster Says No" rally against the Anglo-Irish Agreement at Belfast City Hall together.^[4] According to Courtney the signing of the Agreement saw a surge of recruits to the UDA in general and C Company in particular, leading to an upswing in violent activity.^[5]

Courtney had a reputation as something of a petty thief and even suffered a punishment beating from more senior members of the UDA for a spate of burglaries on the Shankill.^[1] However Courtney was taken away from these habits by William "Winkie" Dodds, an old family friend of the Courtneys who was five years older than Mo. Initially recruiting just Courtney, before also adding Adair and others from Oldpark, Dodds trained the youngsters in weapons use in order to prepare them for active service.^[1]

UDA activity

Courtney was soon sent out as a gunman and was allegedly active in killing by around 1987.^[6] During the 1980s he headed an Active Service Unit (ASU) of the UDA in West Belfast.^[7] He was questioned in regards to the 1989 murder of Pat Finucane in 2002.^[8]

During the late 1980s, Courtney was part of a movement within the UDA that became frustrated with the directions being taken by the UDA leadership. He argued that too little was being done by the movement in terms of killing republicans as the leaders were too happy to sit back and become rich from extortion and racketeering. Courtney was soon involved in conspiracies to overthrow the UDA leadership.^[9] These however came to nothing as the fallout from the Stevens Inquiries saw the existing leadership swept aside. For his part, Courtney would go on to become part of the new leadership that emerged in the 1990s around Johnny Adair.^[7]

Courtney was jailed in 1991 for robbery, theft and hijacking, and soon became a leading figure within the Maze prison. Along with Adair and Michael Stone, he met Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politician and then Lord Mayor of Belfast, Rev Eric Smyth in the prison to discuss the possibility of a future prisoner release scheme.^[10]

He gained a reputation as a fearsome fighter and took a leading role in the battles with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) during the internecine loyalist feud between Adair's men and the UVF in 2000.^[8] On 19 August 2000 when the feud broke out fully, Courtney was identified as one of three gunmen who shot at UVF members who had barricaded themselves in the Rex Bar. Three people were injured in the gun attack with others wounded from a series of physical attacks by C Company members.^[11] Adair was returned to prison as the feud escalated and there he became close to the Shoukri brothers, leading figures in the North Belfast UDA. Courtney, along with other Adair cohorts such as Gary "Smickers" Smyth, teamed up the Shoukris whilst Adair was imprisoned and ran a lucrative drug dealing operation together.^[12]

Return to UDA mainstream

In late 2002 when Adair and his ally John White were expelled from the UDA Courtney remained loyal to "Mad Dog" and was the main guard at Adair's Shankill Road house, known colloquially as the "Big Brother House" after the setting of the then popular TV series.^[13] However Adair had grown suspicious of the new relationship between Courtney and the Shoukris, whom Adair had come to see as rivals, and, believing that they were plotting against him, sent a hit team to kill Courtney. He managed to avoid the attack after being warned about it by his C Company colleague Donald Hodgen.^[14]

Following the killing of popular UDA man John Gregg, the leadership of the UDA under Jackie McDonald offered members of the UDA loyal to Adair the chance to defect back to the mainstream UDA whilst putting the word around that they intended to launch an all-out assault on Adair's Boundary Way stronghold on the lower Shankill. Realising that Adair's time was up, Courtney prepared to defect by visiting the mother of Johnny Adair's wife Gina Crossan and threatening her unless she told him the whereabouts of Adair's arms cache. Although Adair's mother-in-law was unable to give him the information he sought, Courtney was able to take weapons and money from a nearby C Company arms dump. He subsequently took these to the "Heather Social Club", the headquarters of those on the Shankill loyal to the mainstream UDA, where he affirmed his split from Adair and his new loyalty to McDonald.^[15] Courtney denounced Adair as a "treacherous bastard" for the attempted hit against him.^[16] Adair fled the Shankill a few days later, and in a public show of loyalty to the new UDA regime, Courtney was filmed by television cameras defacing a mural Adair had ordered painted extolling the friendship between the UDA and the Loyalist Volunteer Force. This was part of a wider removal of murals, posters and graffiti in support of Adair and C Company.^[17]

Alan McCullough

Courtney regained his influence within the UDA and replaced "Fat Jackie" Thompson as brigadier of the West Belfast UDA.^[18] As a result, it was he that Alan McCullough, who had fled to England with Adair, phoned in mid 2003 seeking permission to return to the Shankill having grown tired of life in exile in Bolton. McCullough promised Courtney to tell him the whereabouts of a huge haul of drugs stashed by C Company as well as the address of Gina Adair, whose house McCullough even shot at in order to prove his loyalty to the new leadership. McCullough was given permission to return although when he did so he was killed by the UDA at Mallusk near Templepatrick in a double cross on 28 May 2003.^[19] McCullough's murder caused widespread revulsion on the lower Shankill mainly on account of the treacherous nature of the killing. This resulted in Courtney, who still feared for his position within the UDA because of his long associations with Adair, going into hiding as he feared a possible retaliation.^[18]

Courtney, along with Ihab Shoukri, was arrested and charged with the murder of McCullough a few days later.^[20] He had been discovered in Carrickfergus where he had gone into hiding.^[21] However Courtney was acquitted of the murder in 2006.^[22] In a Diplock court trial the judge ruled that there were flaws in the evidence provided by McCullough's family and an anonymous "witness A".^[23]

Following his release, the Court of Appeal passed judgement that his acquittal had been unsound and ordered a retrial. Not long after this, in January 2007, Courtney was the victim of a savage attack on the Shankill Road by an old UVF rival.^[24]

At the retrial Courtney was given an eight year prison sentence after confessing to manslaughter.^[22] His version of events, which was accepted by the court, was that Courtney believed he was to be involved only in a knee-capping of McCullough but that another person present had actually done the killing.^[25] Following his imprisonment, Barbara McCullough, the deceased's mother, claimed that Courtney had been a police agent and informer.^[26]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} David Lister & Hugh Jordan, Mad Dog: The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and 'C' Company, Mainstream, 2004, p. 56
2. ^ Lister & Jordan, Mad Dog, pp. 29-30
3. ^ Lister & Jordan, Mad Dog, pp. 47-48
4. ^ Lister & Jordan, Mad Dog, p. 51
5. ^ Lister & Jordan, Mad Dog, p. 55
6. ^ Lister & Jordan, Mad Dog, p. 59
7. ^ ^{a b} Peter Taylor, Loyalists, Bloomsbury, 2000, p. 204
8. ^ ^{a b} Henry McDonald & Jim Cusack, UDA - Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terrorr, Penguin Ireland, 2004, p. 377
9. ^ Taylor, Loyalists, pp. 204-205
10. ^ Adair's lieutenant shifts sides to UDA
11. ^ Lister & Jordan, Mad Dog, pp. 289-290
12. ^ Lister & Jordan, Mad Dog, p. 309
13. ^ McDonald & Cusack, UDA, p. 378
14. ^ Lister & Jordan, Mad Dog, p. 329
15. ^ McDonald & Cusack, UDA, p. 384
16. ^ Lister & Jordan, Mad Dog, p. 328
17. ^ McDonald & Cusack, UDA, p. 388
18. ^ ^{a b} Lister & Jordan, Mad Dog, p. 335
19. ^ McDonald & Cusack, UDA, p. 393
20. ^ McDonald & Cusack, UDA, p. 394
21. ^ Finucane suspect charged over UDA feud killing
22. ^ ^{a b} Top loyalist given eight years from bbc.co.uk
23. ^ Loyalist cleared on murder charge
24. ^ Mo Attacked
25. ^ Loyalist admits feud manslaughter
26. ^ Courtney is a tout: Victim's mother

Other offices
Preceded by Johnny Adair	Ulster Defence Association West Belfast Brigadier 2002–2003	Succeeded by Jim Spence

Persondata
Name	Courtney, Mo
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1963
Place of birth	Belfast, Northern Ireland
Date of death
Place of death