A crazed INLA leader dubbed 'Dark Cloud' threatened to rape a teenage boy
before strangling and shooting him in a shocking terror attack.
The 14-year-old child, who is too terrified to be named, is still
recovering in hospital from the trauma of the brutal ordeal.
And last night (Saturday) his enraged mother threatened to go public and name the gang
involved if they didn't leave her son alone.
The teenager, who was tarred and feathered on the orders of the same INLA
boss only months ago, was stripped naked, hooded and interrogated for five
hours in a secret hideaway.
His sick captors threatened to shoot him dead if he went public - before
blasting him in the leg and dumping him at a holy grotto in the New Lodge.
His mother, who is comforting her son in hospital, branded his
interrogators "sick, depraved, drug-dealing scumbags".
The mother-of-three, who spent hours on Friday scouring the streets looking
for her eldest child after he was kidnapped, said: "No one deserves this.
They wouldn't treat an animal the way they treated my son.
"They beat and strangled him - he has the marks around his neck and they
also threatened to rape him - the language they used was filthy.
"If that's not child abuse I don't know what is. Basically they are
scumbags and paedophiles. They're the lowest of the low.
"They put a gun to his head and said awful sexual things to him. They named
a paedophile from the area and said he was going to get some of his
treatment, that they were going to be the perverts and he'd be the raped
victim.
"He really thought he was going to be raped and killed. They had put a
hood over his head and stripped him, leaving him lying on a floor.
"They basically accused him of dealing drugs with loyalists which simply is
not true.
"But he told me he admitted to things that he hadn't done and I told him it
was OK, that I too would have done the same if a gun had been pointed at my
head."
The 34-year-old Ardoyne woman said she was told yesterday that her son was
"to get four bullets" but now believes the gang backed down when they
realised that he was only 14 years old.
"There has been a vendetta going on with this crowd now for a year. They
tarred and feathered him outside the Shamrock club in Ardoyne last April
and put heavy chains round his ankles which the hospital couldn't even get
off. He chipped bones in his legs trying to get them off," she said.
"But there's always the taunts and jeers at him and I had feared that they
would try to shoot him.
The terrified teenager was abducted on Friday while out playing with his
10-year-old brother near his mother's Ardoyne Road home.
A two-man gang grabbed him before subjecting him to a savage attack and
bundling him into a car.
His tearful mother said they were left for over five hours not knowing if
he was dead or alive.
"It was terrifying for us. We were here the whole time not knowing what had
happened.
"It was only when someone heard on the news that there'd been a shooting
that I went out scouring the streets.
"He was found under Our Lady's grotto in the New Lodge. How sick is that.
They shot a child under a sacred grotto.
"My 10-year-old is distraught. He witnessed the attack in the street. What
sort of thing is that to subject a child to?
"No wonder children are committing suicide if this is the environment they
are growing up in," she said.
"My son is no angel. But he goes about with a crowd and nothing ever
happens to any of them.
"He's been singled out and targeted because some in the INLA don't like
him.
"They'll stop at nothing to make his life hell. I could be burying my son
today. It's just not right.
"He's still only a child."
Details of the attack attracted widespread condemnation yesterday and even
Belfast Lord Mayor Martin Morgan branded the attackers "child abusers".
But the boy's mother says it's time to stand up to the paramilitary
bully-boys and she's threatened to take on the INLA if they touch her son
again.
"If they ever touch him again I'll name them. If they want him they'll have
to get to me first. And if they target him I'll find them out and burn
their houses to the ground.
"These people claim to be freedom fighters. They fought to have places like
Castlereagh interrogation centre closed down and yet they do the same on a
child," she said.
"They are nothing but drug-dealing scumbags. Half the organisation has been
shot themselves for their activities. They are scum, not republicans.
"I dread to think what my child was put through in that house... a gun to
his head and threatening to rape him before shooting him. They're just
sick, sick child abusers."
Last night Mayor Morgan told The People: "The community has to reject these
people.
"They are nothing better than child abusers.
"The INLA has reached a new level of depravity, a new level of sickness."
