Gerard and Rory Carins

The charges against Mr Maguire arose following an interview he gave to BBC’s Spotlight on The Troubles: A Secret History programme in 2019. In that programme he also made allegations that loyalist Billy Wright was obtaining information about targets “from police officers working with him”.

Gerard and Rory Carins were murdered in their home in Bleary near Portadown on the night of 28 October 1993. An investigation carried out by Police Ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, in 2007 found no evidence of collusion in the case, but upheld their father, Eamon Cairns’ complaint that the RUC had failed to conduct a proper investigation, winding down the investigation just two weeks after the killings.

Allegations by Mr Maguire in the Spotlight programme indicated an earlier plot to target the brothers in 1992, the family being singled out because their cousin, Sheena Campbell, was a Sinn Féin activist. She was murdered by the UVF in 1992. It is charges based on involvement in this earlier plot to which Mr Maguire has pleaded guilty.

In a statement released on their behalf by their solicitors Madden & Finucane the Cairns family said: “It is very important to our family and many other families that this guilty plea is recorded in the archives of history, for future generations especially for our grandchildren.

“Our precious sons and our brothers were murdered in 1993 in their own home and we have never got any truth or justice. This is the only semblance of redress.

“We believe there is no cause worth the murder of innocent children, women or men.”

Katie McAllister of Madden & Finucane said: “This has been a long time coming for the Cairns family. Following the broadcast of BBC Spotlight documentary in October 2019, the admissions to this crime made by Maguire, and the magnitude of the levels of collusion between the mid-Ulster UVF and the RUC that he described, we immediately asked the Secretary of State to announce a public inquiry into the allegations that the State was actively involved in murdering its own civilians through their proxies in loyalist paramilitary organisations. The Secretary of State declined to do so and the matter was instead referred to the PSNI to investigate the allegations.

“Maguire’s plea of guilty today is very significant however the extent of collusion in mid-Ulster still is not known. The Cairns family will now press on with their civil proceedings in the search of that truth.”