A FORMER UVF prisoner who warned violence could be used to overturn the Northern Ireland Protocol has died.
Former UVF prisoner Joe Coggle Jr died last Friday. His funeral took place on Thursday 15th September in the Shankill area of north Belfast.
15th September, 2022.
Joe Coggle Jr, who was jailed in 1993 for his role in a failed gun attack in west Belfast, died last Friday after a period of illness.
The wheelchair-bound loyalist, who was from the Shankill area of Belfast, last year took part in anti-protocol rallies, including one on Shankill Road featuring masked men walking alongside banners urging the British government to trigger Article 16.
Among scenes from the rally last June was a large Sinn Féin banner proclaiming 'A united Ireland is for everyone, let’s talk about it', being set alight. Coggle was pictured holding a flaming torch to the banner that protestors claimed was stolen from Divis flats.
The ex-prisoner, who was the son of late former DUP-turned independent Belfast unionist councillor Joe Coggle, also spoke with Guardian journalist Rory CarRoll at the rally.
Mr Carroll reported in a tweet that the loyalist said regarding the Brexit Sea border: "If violence needed to overturn protocol so be it."
The tweet was accompanied by an image of the former UVF man holding an anti-protocol placard.
Coggle served 18 years for his role in a planned UVF attack in 1991 that was foiled by RUC officers understood to have been tipped off by an informant in the paramilitary gang.
Coggle was one of four men in a car that was surrounded by officers in the Springfield Road area in December of that year, and inside the vehicle police found several AK47 firearms and ammunition.
At their trial two years later, the group was described by judge Lord Justice Kelly as "ruthless terrorists bent on wholesale murder".
Coggle, who was sentenced for conspiracy to murder, was later released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
Following his death, tributes have been paid online, including from the Greengairs Thistle Flute Band in Scotland, who wrote in a social media post it was "devastated to announce the passing of our esteemed comrade volunteer". The post described Coggle as of "C Company, Ist Belfast Battalion, Ulster Volunteer Force", adding: "Our thoughts at this time are with his immediate family and comrades. Here lies a soldier".
One post from a Facebook user wrote of Coggle: "The Shankill lost one of its last true loyalists."
A funeral service is to take place at a private resident in the Crumlin Road area of north Belfast today.
With many thanks to the: Irish News and Paul Ainsworth for the original story.
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