UVF planned to kill Martin McGuinness on Glenshane Pass, new book claims

A new book charting the history of the modern Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) claims the terror group once planned to murder Martin McGuinness while he was travelling over the Glenshane Pass.

Elsewhere, ‘UVF: Behind the Mask’, says it was the UVF’s rivals, the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), specifically its Shankill Road based C Company, which murdered Buncrana Sinn Féin councillor Eddie Fullerton in 1991.

The author, Aaron Edwards, a lecturer in Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst claims the UVF wanted to ambush Mr. McGuinness with pistols and explosives as he drove through the Sperrins around 1990.

“UVF sources claim that the organisation was actively targeting Martin McGuinness at that time too, one of the Provisional IRA’s most senior commanders,” writes Mr. Edwards.

“They suggest that the UVF had put an elaborate plan into operation to target McGuinness as he drove out of Derry City along the Glenshane Pass where his vehicle would be specifically attacked by small arms and explosives.”

Mr. Edwards claims the information on the abandoned assassination plot was provided to him as recently as March 2017, the month of the late republican leader’s death.

Elsewhere, he claims UFF members from the Shankill killed Mr. Fullerton.

“C Company had proven that they were prepared to venture outside Belfast if a targeting opportunity arise, perhaps best illustrated in their assassination of popular Sinn Féin councillor Eddie Fullerton in Buncrana, Donegal, on May 25, 1991,” he writes.