Michael Stone (loyalist paramilitary)
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Michael Stone (born circa 1955 in Belfast) is a loyalist paramilitary member from the Braniel estate in Northern Ireland.
He is most famous for the "Milltown Massacre" in 1988, which took place at the predominantly catholic Milltown Cemetery in Belfast during the funeral of three Provisional Irish Republican Army members, who were killed while on active service, by the British Army in Gibraltar. Intent on killing top republicans, including Gerry Adams, Michael Stone attacked the crowd with grenades and a pistol. He killed an IRA member and two civilians, and injured sixty others before he was arrested. The attack was caught on television cameras and provided some of the most savage images of the conflict.
Stone, who apparently objected to the newspaper's portrayal of him as a mad Rambo-style gunman, also confessed to shooting dead three other Catholics between 1984 and 1987. He claimed the victims were linked to the IRA, but none of them were. At his trial he pleaded not guilty, but refused to offer any defence. Convicted of six murders, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation he serve at least thirty years.
While behind bars Stone became the leader of the Ulster Freedom Fighters and was among many prisoners in HM Prison Maze to meet Mo Mowlam during the negotiations the government held with paramilitaries from both sides during peace negotiations in the mid-1990s. He also collaborated with Martin Dillon on a book about his life entitled Stone Cold (ISBN 0-09-177410-1).
On July 24, 2000, Stone was released from prison under the Good Friday Peace Agreement of 1998 that ruled that those convicted of terrorist crimes were to be set free. The jubilant and triumphant scenes that fellow loyalists greeted Stone with upon his release angered many Irish Nationalists, although paramilitaries of both sides were often treated as heroes upon their release and this always caused offence and anger, particularly among the victims' relatives.
He now lives in east Belfast with his girlfriend and has adopted a lower profile in recent years, although in 2004 he published his autobiography titled None Shall Divide Us, in which he revealed that he had received "specialist assistance" from RUC operatives in carrying out the cemetery killings[1]. He has nine children from two previous marriages. He also featured in the BBC2 television series Facing the Truth where he met relatives of a victim of loyalist violence.
In November 2006, he claimed to have been "three days" away from executing then leader of the Greater London Authority and current Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, over his support for Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams. [2].
