John Weir

John Oliver Weir (born 1950) is an Ulster loyalist born and raised in the Republic of Ireland.

He served as an officer in Northern Ireland's Royal Ulster Constabulary's (RUC) Special Patrol Group (SPG) (a tactical reserve unit), and was a volunteer in the illegal Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

Weir was born in 1950 in County Monaghan in the Republic of Ireland to Church of Ireland parents on an estate near Castleblayney, where his father was employed as a gamekeeper.

Raised in County Monaghan, he was later educated at The King's Hospital, a Protestant private school in Dublin.

Over six feet tall, powerfully built, with blond hair and blue eyes, he had an imposing physical presence, which made him stand out in a crowd.

As a member of the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade led by Robin "the Jackal" Jackson, Weir was a part of the Glenanne gang, a group of loyalist extremists that carried out sectarian attacks mainly in the County Armagh area in the mid-1970s.

Initially he had considered joining the Garda Síochána, the police force of the Republic of Ireland; however, in keeping with his family's political traditions, he opted to join Northern Ireland's police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), in March 1970 when he was 20 years of age.

Upon his completion of training in Enniskillen Training Depot, he was first posted to the Strandtown RUC station in loyalist east Belfast.

He was transferred to Armagh RUC station in 1972, and it was there on 1 August 1973 he was recruited into the Special Patrol Group (SPG), which was the RUC's "anti-terrorist" unit.

It was made up entirely of Protestants.

His duties involved making early morning arrests, evacuation of civilians at the scenes of suspect bombs and responding to explosions and shootings, as well as riot control.

He claimed the SPG officers were "very anti-republican, and sectarian attitudes were common".

Weir and his colleagues routinely beat up Catholics suspected of harbouring republican sentiments.

The SPG saw themselves as being the main police line of defence against all terrorist organisations but mainly the atrocities of the outlawed Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA); who were responsible for more deaths than any other group and as such they considered the republican paramilitaries to be the main threat although they often came under attack from the Ulster loyalist paramilitaries.

By the end of 1973, members of the SPG decided that due to the political " softly softly " stance of mainly but not exclusively Labour government policies they would have to "break the rules to curb the terrorists", by which they meant republican paramilitaries.

Following the killing of an Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) officer in 1974 by the IRA, rumours spread that Weir had been involved in the UVF's cross-border killing of prominent IRA man John Francis Green in County Monaghan.

Just before Green's killing, Weir had discovered that Green had been using a safe house just over the border and tipped off his RUC Special Branch colleagues.

Weir stated he first met senior UVF member Robin Jackson in a pub in Moira, County Down, in 1974 where he had gone to have drinks with his girlfriend.

The bombs which were used in the UVF's 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings were built and stored on the farm.

Weir claimed Mitchell had admitted to him that he had been involved in the bombings and he had personally seen Mitchell mixing home-made ammonium-nitrate-and-fuel-oil explosive in the farmyard on one occasion.

He was therefore sent for his own safety to the SPG unit in Castlereagh, Belfast, on 25 January 1975, fifteen days after Green's shooting.

Jackson would assume command of the organisation's Mid-Ulster Brigade in July 1975 upon the assassination of the Brigade's founder and first commander, Billy Hanna, who also served as a sergeant in the UDR.

The killer was allegedly Jackson.

Jackson's brigade was part of a loose alliance of hardline loyalists who carried out a series of sectarian attacks against Catholics/nationalists, mainly in the South Armagh area, but also other areas in Northern Ireland as well as the Republic of Ireland.

This group was later named the Glenanne gang.

In addition to Jackson's Mid-Ulster Brigade, the gang comprised rogue members of the UDR, the RUC, SPG, and the UDA, allegedly functioning under the direction of British military intelligence and/or RUC Special Branch.

The gang's name derived from a farm in Glenanne, County Armagh, which was owned by RUC reservist, James Mitchell.

Weir maintained that it was used as a UVF arms dump and bomb-making site.

On 1 September 1976, he was transferred to Omagh where he spent six weeks at Lisanelly Camp.

On 11 October 1976 he was promoted to the rank of sergeant and was again transferred, this time to Newry RUC station.

Weir later admitted to have been indirectly involved in the bombing and shooting attack at the nationalist Tully's Bar in Belleeks on 8 March 1976.

According to his later account of events leading up to the attack, when he arrived at Mitchell's farm the designated evening, he saw between eight and ten men dressed in camouflage, parading in the farmyard.

Inside the farmhouse he discussed the details of the attack with Mitchell and the others.

Mitchell had shown him the floor plans of the pub's interior, highlighting the lack of escape routes for the pub's patrons.

The plan was temporarily called off when it was discovered that the British Army's Parachute Regiment was on patrol in the area that evening.

Weir returned to Belfast the following morning and that evening, 8 March, Weir heard the attack had gone ahead.

Weir and his RUC colleague Billy McCaughey were convicted of the 1977 sectarian killing of Catholic chemist William Strathearn and sentenced to life imprisonment.

He remained in Newry until November 1977, when he was sent to Newtownhamilton RUC station.

His next posting was to Dunmurry, Belfast, in April 1978 and his final posting was in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, on 4 September 1978.

Weir's affidavit which implicated Jackson, other members of the Glenanne gang, soldiers of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), and his colleagues in the RUC and SPG, in a series of sectarian attacks, including the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, was published in the 2003 Barron Report, the findings of an official investigation into the 1974 car bombings commissioned by Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron.