Joe Bratty

Joe Bratty (c. 1961 - 31 July 1994) was a Northern Irish loyalist paramilitant and a leading member of the Ulster Defence Association's South Belfast Brigade.

Bratty's unit struck on 7 September 1990 when they entered the house of a 34-year-old Catholic, Emmanuel Shields, and shot him dead as he lay in bed with his pregnant girlfriend.

According to his family, Shields, who had a criminal record but not for republican activity, had regularly been targeted by Bratty and his associates for physical attack in the past and they had fired shots into his mother's house in nearby Burmah Street when he lived with her.

A number of residents had complained to Bratty in his role as local UDA commander about the noise of her stereo and he assembled a team of ten men armed with baseball bats who broke in, beat her to death (seriously injuring three of her companions) and wrecked the flat.

[11] Bratty was also identified as the getaway driver for the attack in which Teresa Clinton, the wife of a Sinn Féin election candidate, was murdered in her Lower Ormeau home.

Annett died on 12 July 1996 as part of an internal UDA dispute when two fellow members of the organisation kicked him to death outside a bar on the Ormeau Road.

[4] Bratty was first targeted in late 1991 by the Provisional IRA when they decided to adopt the tactic of focusing on prominent loyalist paramilitaries alongside the security forces.

[13] Some time after this attack, Bratty moved from the Annadale Flats to live in Greenwood Lodge on the Upper Newtownards Road in East Belfast.

A nearby IRA unit dispatched an assassination squad that lay in wait, hidden in a white van parked right in front of Bratt's car.

[15] On the loyalist group entering the Ormeau Road from Deramore Avenue, Elder was ordered to check out the van but failed to spot anyone inside.

Elder was killed close to the car almost opposite South Parade while Bratty managed to run across the Ormeau Road before being shot dead, 18 bullets in his body.

[23] The killings of Bratty and Elder, along with that of Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) leader Ray Smallwoods earlier the same month, played a central role in delaying the Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC) ceasefire.

The CLMC had been considering declaring a ceasefire following the Loughinisland massacre, but reversed their decision after these three killings as they believed that any cessation of violence would have then been seen as a sign of weakness.

[28] An August 2014 march commemorating the pair was condemned by both nationalist politicians and the Ulster Unionist Party after it ended with a ceremony in a Housing Executive-funded First World War garden of remembrance close to the Annadale Flats.