UDA linked to pounds 1m raid in Belfast

A pounds 1m robbery in Belfast at the weekend was the work of a major loyalist paramilitary group, according to reliable security sources in the city.

Police have discounted original reports that the IRA might have been responsible, and now believe the robbery, one of the Northern Ireland's biggest, was carried out on behalf of the illegal Ulster Defence Association. Yesterday, a man was in custody for questioning.

On Saturday morning gunmen forced their way into the home of a Securicor employee in Taughmonagh, a loyalist housing estate in south Belfast. They bound and gagged the man's wife, his father-in-law, a boy of 14, and his brother- in-law, who is handicapped.

The employee was ordered to go to a Securicor depot, collect the money and take it to an isolated spot on the outskirts of south Belfast. He and a colleague were then held by three armed men who handcuffed and hooded them and made off with the cash.

t A fresh attempt is being made to extradite terrorist suspect Anthony Duncan from Ireland to Britain, after the first bid collapsed, it emerged yesterday. Duncan, 26, wanted in connection with a 1994 British bombing campaign, walked free from an Irish district court on Friday when the judge said Scotland Yard documents were "fatally flawed". Minutes later he was rearrested and remanded in custody on an IRA membership charge.