Loyalist killer Michael Stone's parole to be challenged

At the funerals of three IRA members loyalist gunman Michael Stone fired shots and threw grenades at mourners

The sister of one of loyalist killer Michael Stone's victims has won High Court permission to challenge his eligibility to seek parole.

Deborah McGuinness was granted leave to apply for a judicial review of Department of Justice calculations of his time served in prison.

Her brother, Thomas McErlean, was among three people killed by Stone in a gun and grenade attack in a cemetery.

Mr McErlean died in an attack on an IRA funeral in Milltown Cemetery in 1988.

The ex-UDA man was also the gunman in another three separate killings:

• Milkman Patrick Brady was murdered in south Belfast in November 1984

• Joiner Kevin McPolin was shot in the head in Lisburn, County Antrim, 12 months after Mr Brady.

• In May 1987 Dermott Hackett, a bread server, was found dead in his van between Drumquin and Omagh. He had been shot up to 16 times with a submachine gun.

Michael Stone (centre) being restrained during the attack at Stormont in 2006

Stone, 63, was freed under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement in 2000, but returned to jail six years later for trying to kill Sinn Féin leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness at Stormont in 2006.

In 2013, he was told that he must serve the remainder of a 30-year sentence for his sectarian murder campaign.

It was believed this meant he may not even be considered for release until this year.

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With a parole hearing described as "imminent", Ms McGuinness began her legal challenge.

The judge identified her central challenge as being the department's calculation that Stone had served the 30-year tariff by July 2018.

"The sole question for this court is whether this calculation is vitiated by illegality," he said.

The challenge will be heard in January.