![]() McDonald (2001) characterizes the LVF and UDA ceasefire agreements as "official fiction". These organizations are generally composed of young Protestant males from Northern Ireland. The Council on Foreign Relations indicates the membership of the RHD, LVF and Orange Volunteers likely overlap. Interestingly, claims of responsibility by the RHD for certain attacks have overlapped with the Orange Volunteers. Similar accusations have been made regarding the name " Orange Volunteers", another loyalist paramilitary group that emerged in 1998. It has been alleged that the name "Red Hand Defenders" is merely a covername for members of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA) so the organizations can claim on the surface to have honored their ceasefire agreements. 1 Links with the wider loyalist movement.Of the eleven people the RHD claimed to have killed, nine were civilians, one was a former UDA member and one was an RUC officer. She had represented alleged Irish republican paramilitaries, the family of Robert Hamill, and the Garvaghy Road Residents Association. One of the RHD's most notable attacks was the assassination of human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson on 15 March 1999. It has also claimed responsibility for many pipe bomb attacks, mostly on the homes of Catholics. Since then, the RHD has claimed responsibility for killing a further ten people. The attack killed a Catholic Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer. Loyalists had been protesting against the decision to ban the Orange Order from marching through the town's mainly Catholic and Irish nationalist quarter (see Drumcree conflict). ![]() The RHD emerged when it claimed responsibility for a blast bomb attack on 7 September 1998 during a loyalist protest in Portadown. It is named after the Red Hand of Ulster. The name had first been used by Red Hand Commandos dissident Frankie Curry in 1996 and he was the leading figure in what was a somewhat unstructured organization until he was killed in 1999. Its members were drawn mostly from the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). It was formed in 1998 by loyalists who opposed the Belfast Agreement and the loyalist ceasefires. The Red Hand Defenders ( RHD) is an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. September 1998 onwards (current status unknown)ĭesignated as a terrorist group by the United States in 2001
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