Fourteen men have been ordered to stand trial accused of unlawful assembly in an incident police have said was a “concerted show of strength” during a “vicious” drug turf war in north Down.
In an offence rarely seen in the Crown Court the defendants are all jointly charged with a single count of unlawful assembly in that on 6 April 2023, they “assembled with others, in an assembly of three or more persons, to achieve a law or unlawful object in such a way as to cause reasonable and courageous persons in the vicinity to apprehend a breach of peace.”
The men accused of involvement are:
- 47-year-old Stewart Scott Anderson
- 22-year-old Reece Beattie
- 58-year-old Samuel Coulter
- 53-year-old Barry Dann
- 36-year-old Jimmy Leung
- 37-year-old Andrew McGimpsey
- 49-year-old William Robert McCormick
- 44-year-old David Milligan
- 49-year-old Noel Thomas Morrison
- 25-year-old Harry Murray aka Henry
- 39-year-old Colin Perry
- 40-year-old Graham Skinner
- 42-year-old David James Thompson
- 33-year-old Ryan Turley.
The charges arise as a result of what has been described by police as a “concerted show of strength” at Weavers Grange in Ards on 6 April and came in the midst of what Judge Hamill has repeatedly described as “an ongoing, vicious feud between not freedom fighters but drug gangsters and I repeat, no one has gain said that.”
The incident where up to 60 men, many of the wearing masks and balaclavas with at least two of them carrying a ladder and a hammer, marched across the town and into the base of the rival faction where they removed South East Antrim UDA banners from the gable walls of three houses.
In just a few months from when the feud began on 22 March, there had been more than 120 incidents including petrol bomb attacks, a pipe bomb attack, a shooting, a litany of damage caused and intimidation and even two incidents at the courthouse itself.
In one incident a threat to kill was painted in two foot letters across the front wall of the courthouse and in another windows were broken and a target painted on the walls of the court.
Judge Hamill said the attacks on the courthouse and the threats made against him are “an existential threat to the rule of law in Newtownards.”
In court on Thursday a prosecuting lawyer submitted there was a Prima Facie case against each of the defendants, none of whom exercised heir rights to comment on the charge or to call evidence on their own behalves.
Freeing the 14 on continuing bail, Judge Hamill returned the case to Belfast Crown Court for their non-jury Diplock trial but did not set a date for the arraignment.