The Five Demands

Killer Michael Stone says he is ‘sorry’ for Milltown murders (Belfast Telegraph)

Milltown Massacre gunman Michael Stone has expressed his sorrow in a statement issued to Sunday Life the day after Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan ordered he stay in jail until at least December 2024.

But even then his release isn’t guaranteed as he will have to convince a parole board that he should be freed.

Last Monday 58-year-old Stone was told he would have to serve the remainder of a minimum 30-year term given for six sectarian killings committed in the 1980s.

The ex-UDA man, who was freed under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement in 2000 but returned to jail in 2006 for trying to kill Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness at Stormont, said the judgment “wasn’t unexpected”.

He added: “I’m annoyed at the judge stating that I had shown no remorse for my actions when I stated in my autobiography that I expressed remorse and regret for the lives lost.

“Taking the law into my own hands was wrong, but I see myself as a political prisoner and I’m glad the judge acknowledged my actions were politically motivated.

“Recently Martin McGuinness said the republican cause was just.

“I see the loyalist cause as just but see Troubles related deaths as regrettable.”

Hours after Stone was told he would spend at least the next five years behind bars in Maghaberry Prison the brother of one of his six Catholic victims branded the loyalist a “publicity seeker”.

Roddy Hackett — whose brother Dermot Hackett was shot 16 times by the UFF in Co Tyrone in 1987 — said: “In my opinion he simply craves the limelight.

“He wants notoriety in whatever form he can get it. He doesn’t seem to be able to exist outside of prison so that’s the best place for him.

“He is better locked up, for his own safety as much as anyone’s.”

Roddy met Stone in 2006 during the filming of the BBC’s Face the Truth documentary in which paramilitaries came face to face with the families of their victims.

The multiple killer told Sunday Life the encounter had a major effect on him and that he was “upset” afterwards.

Stone also insists that he will not be contesting the decision to keep him in prison and has ordered his family not to campaign for his release.

He said: “I am making no challenge to my sentence, and I refused to recognise the court as I had done in 1988.

“I had no representation as I wanted to save taxpayers’ money.”