I’m finished with UDA – Shoukri
FORMER UDA leader Andre Shoukri claims he has no plans to regain his paramilitary leadership.
The 33-year-old, who was released from Maghaberry jail seven weeks ago after serving four-and-a-half years for blackmail and extortion, told the News Letter: “I am telling you straight, I will never be in control of north Belfast UDA ever again. I have no interest.”
The top loyalist spoke out amid mounting speculation that he and former paramilitary figures have been regrouping.
Shoukri said: “I would rather stick needles in my eyes than go back anywhere near it. It’s laughable that they think that. There is no mileage in me going back to that.
“It is a whole different game now for me and I just have no interest in it.
“I have three children. I don’t want to go back to jail.”
Shoukri’s reign formally came to an end in June 2006 after the other five so-called brigadiers in the UDA leadership decided to expel him, his brother Ihab, and another associate.
The expulsion was, at the time, claimed to have been a result of the organisation’s stated commitment to a move away from criminal activity. He then set up a breakaway faction of ousted UDA members.
Shoukri denied that he and his associates were now reorganising, saying: “We are more truthfully – I know no better way to put it – a group of mates.
“We don’t have any structure. Whatever we had in guns and ammunition, we gave in. As far as we were concerned that was it and we were getting out of jail and we were hoping to be left alone.
“We don’t like them and they don’t like us. That is how it is. As long as they just give us a break we are happy enough.
“I mean, what are you going to get out of taking over the UDA again? They are finished. I have had enough. I don’t want to go back to jail and I don’t want any part of them whatsoever. How anyone could grasp onto the idea that we would even be thinking this over again, it’s ludicrous.”
Shoukri claimed he did not want to “paint myself out to be an angel, I have had my bad things and all that, but everything has been magnified in the media”.
“Don’t get me wrong, I had a gamble but that was magnified that I spent a million pounds,” he said.
“But the past is the past.
“I have not so much turned over a new leaf, but I am not interested in taking over the UDA. I am just interested in living my life if I can do that, if they would leave me alone. Through their own fear and paranoia they are doing it.”
When asked if he regretted joining the UDA, Shoukri said: “I don’t want to get into that by saying what I regret. I joined for my own reasons and I did what I did – obviously, I have some regrets.
“But it’s over. I am looking to the future now and the country has a wee bit of normality now. At the same time, we will not be pushed out by the UDA.
“We are no threat to them but at the same time we are not going to be pushed about like eejits.
“All their goading and all the lies they are telling are not working.
We are not guilty of anything they are saying – and the proof of that is if we were, we would have been lifted because we are being watched 24/7.”
