CELTIC player Anthony Stokes said he was "gobsmacked" to be linked with a plot to murder former UDA boss Johnny Adair.
Antoin Duffy (39), his cousin Martin Hughes (36), and Paul Sands (32) were convicted in July of conspiring to kill Adair, who lives in Scotland, and his right-hand man Sam McCrory.
During the nine-week trial, the High Court in Glasgow heard one of the men approached Stokes in the Brazen Head pub in the Gorbals area asking for his father's help in obtaining weapons.
In an interview with the Glasgow-based Sunday Post, Stokes said he was stunned to see his name mentioned in connection with the trial.
"When I saw the headline I was being linked to a murder plot I was gobsmacked," he said.
"Nobody warned me. Not the police, not the Crown Office, nobody and it put me, my partner and my two boys in the firing line.
"To make matters worse my girlfriend was pregnant again when I was thrown into the middle of a terror trial through no fault of our own."
He added: "All this did was pour fuel on the fire and give some people an excuse to make me a target, again when I'd done nothing wrong apart from go to the pub with some mates. I've very little recollection of the incident at all.
"It passed over my head completely. If I'm in the pub and it's busy I might have 100 people come over to me, you don't recollect every encounter you have on a night out but I was left to pick up the pieces."
