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Baggott: Shooting was carried out by UVF members

MEMBERS of the UVF shot Jemma McGrath the chief constable has said.

Matt Baggott said the gun attack had not been sanctioned by the leadership of the UVF but was carried out by individuals connected to a breakaway unit.

It comes after he told The Irish News he believed "local crime gangs" in east Belfast were responsible for the shooting of the 24-year-old care worker in September.

Sinn Fein has questioned why the PSNI "took so long" to attribute the murder attempt to the loyalist paramilitary group.

The chief constable told members of the Policing Board yesterday that intelligence had confirmed the shooting had been carried out by individuals connected to a breakaway UVF unit.

"There are no indications that this was sanctioned by the overall UVF leadership. We believe it to be carried out by individuals linked to a single UVF unit acting on its own accord," he said.

Sinn Fein assembly member and Policing Board member Pat Sheehan asked why the PSNI waited nine weeks to attribute the shooting to the UVF.

"The question everyone will be asking is why this took so long and why confuse the situation by saying that it may have been without sanction," he said.

Mr Sheehan claimed the UVF had orchestrated attacks on the nationalist Short Strand enclave in east Belfast, violent flag protests, drug dealing and shootings, adding: "Are all these incidents without sanction?

"This is not members acting in an individual capacity yet we have had very few arrests for those involved in the activities of the UVF."

The chief constable also expressed concern that splits in the UVF and UDA had created competing agendas and connected gun attacks in east Belfast, Coleraine and Portrush to individual units seeking to exert their power.

"Our assessment is that they are fragmenting and we are seeing a number of competing agendas and increased lack of cohesion which is of a concern," he said.

Punishment-style attacks including the shooting of a 15-year-old schoolboy in Coleraine, Co Derry, last month were also attributed to a single unit of the UDA.

The chief constable rejected claims that police were "going soft" on loyalist paramilitaries whom he described as parasites and Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris said a major operation against the east Belfast UVF was ongoing, targeting a wide range of crimes including intimidation, extortion, blackmail and historic murder cases.

In an interview with The Irish News last month Mr Baggott said there was a difference between loyalist paramilitarism and loyalist crime.

"We don't believe the UVF as an organisation has come off ceasefire - that's a paramilitary issue - but undoubtedly they have some local crime gangs in east Belfast," he said at the time.

In relation to the "horrific" attack on Ms McGrath, the chief constable said the PSNI had been right not to "prematurely" attribute it to the UVF because "we run the risk of the court process being undermined later".