Liam Ryan

Liam Ryan 39 years, Ardboe, Co. Tyrone, shot dead by the UVF in the Battery Bar on 30 November 1989.  Michael Devlin 33 years, also from Ardboe, was killed in the same incident.

Mr Ryan, who was married, was the owner of the Battery Bar situated near Ardboe on a small peninsula jutting out into Lough Neagh, which had only one access road leading to the bar.  On the night the gunmen struck a dart competition was taking place and the bar was relatively full.  Shortly before closing time several of the customers, including Mr Ryan and Mr Devlin were in the hall of the premises when two gunmen approached the building.  When they saw the men in the hallway they immediately opened fire wounding Mr Ryan and Mr Devlin and another man.  One of the gunmen who was armed with a AK47 assault rifle fired a number of bursts of gunfire at the building to keep those inside pinned down to allow his colleague, who was armed with an automatic pistol, to finish off the two wounded men lying in the hallway. 

The gunmen fleeing the scene went to great trouble to disguise their means of escape.  A car, reportedly used by the gunmen and found burned out some distance from the attack, was, according to local people, seen on fire at the time of the shooting.  People in the area believe the gunmen actually escaped across the Lough on a fast boat. 

Unionist gunmen used a similar method during the murder of Sinn Fein Councillor Eddie Fullerton at Buncrana, Co. Donegal, in May 1991, burning a car as a diversion while the killers fled north across Lough Swilly in a boat. 

One of the weapons used in the attack, an AK47 rifle, was used in the murder of Phelim McNally near Coagh, Co. Tyrone, in November 1988.  Mr McNally had been sitting in his brother’s home when gunmen fired through a window.  The gunmen’s intended target had been Francis McNally, a Sinn Fein Councillor in the area.

Both weapons used in the attack were part of a huge haul of weaponry smuggled into the North of Ireland by unionist paramilitaries in the winter of 1987.  Several British agents working within unionist paramilitaries had acquired the weapons in South Africa, and later the shipment was monitored by British intelligence agencies from there to the Ireland.   Yet despite the British ‘security forces’ arranging and knowing every movement of the arms haul unionist paramilitaries were able to take possession of it in the north in December 1987, and began its distribution amongst several unionist paramilitary groupings in January 1988.   An unnamed source in the British Intelligence Services admitted the above in January 1993, putting the fact that unionist paramilitaries received the weapons down to a ‘breakdown’ in their surveillance operation losing all trace of the haul when it was landed in the North of Ireland.

To date no one has been charged in connection with the murder of Mr Ryan or Mr Devlin.