Detectives investigating the murder of former IRA member Kevin McGuigan have charged a 53-year-old man with possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.
He will appear in a Belfast court on Thursday after being arrested and questioned this week over the McGuigan murder.
Three men and a woman also detained on Wednesday in connection with the McGuigan killing have been released unconditionally. It is understood that one of those freed on Wednesday was IRA Shankill bomber Sean Kelly.
Two men, one 46 and the other 26, remain in custody at the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s serious crime suite in Antrim over the fatal shooting last week of the former IRA prisoner.
Suspicion for the McGuigan murder has fallen on ex-Provisional IRA veterans taking revenge for the killing back in May of former Belfast IRA commander Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison in the Market district of central Belfast.
McGuigan’s murder in front of his wife outside their home in the Catholic enclave of Short Strand has sparked political controversy with unionists questioning if the IRA is still active even though the organisation said it was ending its ‘war’ back in 2005 and decommissioning its weapons.
McGuigan was buried on Tuesday amid tight security with armoured police land rovers and helicopters observing mourners both at requiem mass in the Short Strand and later at the city cemetery in East Belfast. At his funeral a local priest appealed for the violence to stop.
