W2C-010 Sunday Life 2-2.txt
UFF STEPS UP TERROR CAMPAIGN Alan Murray

Security sources believe that the UFF managed to locate the new safe house of the IRA's top man in North Belfast within just six weeks.

The house was attacked and another IRA activist escaped without injury. The ability of the loyalist terrorists to track down the location is an illustration of how much better their intelligence on the IRA has become.

Homework

A Special Branch Officer said: "It shows they are driving around nationalist areas, consulting electoral register records and basically doing their homework."

Uncovering the IRA man's safe house, detectives believe, was basically a case of watching car movements.
"We 're certain the UFF identifies a car used by the target, then they drive through nationalist areas in the city late at night looking for the car.
"If they locate it outside a house, then they establish when it is there, and prepare and attack for the period."

Police say that one well known UFF figure is regularly driving through nationalist parts of North and West Belfast despite the real risk to his own life.
An RUC officer said: "He is regularly stopped at road checks by our patrols. He even points at houses and tells uniformed officers 'That's where so and so lives'.
"He really is constantly targeting the homes of IRA figures, but we can't prove that in court."

Such is the geography of the area that a top UFF man in the Shankill and the IRA's top man in North Belfast recently became involved in a heated verbal exchange in a bizarre incident while stopped in cars at traffic lights on the Crumlin Road.

Screaming
One RUC officer said: "If you wrote that into a play or novel, people wouldn't believe it, but it actually happened. Here were these two sworn enemies screaming at each other through car windows.
"It's indicative of a seething hatred and the proximity of loyalist and nationalist areas which enables the killer gangs to drive into one another's area in a minute and get back whether they are scouting or going in to murder."
