Willie Frazer

[2] His funeral was attended by the leaders of three Unionist political parties: Arlene Foster, Robin Swann and Jim Allister [5] William Frazer grew up in the village of Whitecross, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, as one of nine children, with his parents Bertie and Margaret.

The family home had previously been attacked with petrol bombs and gunfire which Frazer claimed were IRA men, due to Bertie's UDR membership.

[citation needed] Frazer has stated that his family was well respected in the area including by "old-school IRA men" and received Mass cards from Catholic neighbours expressing their sorrow over his father's killing.

During the Drumcree conflict, Frazer was a supporter of the Portadown Orange Order who were demanding the right to march down the Garvaghy Road against the wishes of local residents.

[13] For a brief period after selling his haulage firm Frazer ran "The Spot", a nightclub in Tandragee, County Armagh, which closed down after two Ulster Protestant civilians who had been in the club, Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine, were stabbed to death in February 2000 by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), after one of them had allegedly made derogatory remarks about dead UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade leader Richard Jameson.

Frazer applied for a licence to hold a firearm for his personal protection and was turned down,[17] a chief inspector said, in part because he was known to associate with loyalist paramilitaries.

[18][19] In 2019, the BBC investigative journalism programme Spotlight reported that Frazer distributed assault rifles and rocket launchers from Ulster Resistance to loyalist terror groups who used them in more than 70 murders.

In January 2007, Frazer protested outside the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in Dublin that voted to join policing structures in Northern Ireland.

"[23] In January 2007, Frazer dismissed Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan's report[24] into security force collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.

[23] In March 2010, he claimed to have served a civil writ on deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, of Sinn Féin, seeking damages arising from the killing of Frazer's father by the Provisional IRA.

Frazer had previously picketed McGuinness's home in Derry in 2007 to demand support for calls for Libya to compensate victims of IRA attacks.

[29] Former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Lord Empey demanded that the conclusions about FAIR's finances be released into the public domain.

[32] A 2011 report by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) found that members of the Provisional IRA carried out the attack despite the organisation being on ceasefire.

[33] A delegation including Frazer, UUP politician Danny Kennedy and relatives of the Kingsmill families travelled to Dublin in September 2012 to seek an apology from the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny.

[35] On 16 November 2012 Frazer announced that he was stepping down as director of FAIR, after he had reviewed a copy of the SEUPB audit report which, he claimed, showed no grounds for demanding the reimbursement of funding.

[citation needed] The total votes polled 5,587 (47.6% of the local electorate); it was a two-candidate race for the Fews Area between Frazer and Sinn Féin candidate Turlough Murphy.

[37] In the 2011 Assembly elections he was listed as a subscriber for the Traditional Unionist Voice candidate for the Newry and Armagh constituency, Barrie Halliday who secured 1.8% of the vote.

[39] In November 2012, Frazer announced his intention to contest the 2013 Mid Ulster by-election necessitated by Martin McGuinness's decision to resign the parliamentary seat to concentrate on his Assembly role.

[41] Despite his earlier advocacy of Ulster nationalism, in 2013 Frazer declared himself in favour of re-establishing direct rule in Northern Ireland.

[43] Since his death in June 2019, investigative work by BBC's Spotlight has alleged that Frazer had supplied weapons to the loyalist paramilitary group Ulster Resistance which were used in the murder of a number of Irish civilians.

[2] In 2004 Frazer invited to South Armagh Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, an advocate of the American militia movement, who had admitted links with "the Ku Klux Klan and an Aryan Nation official".

"[46] In November 2011, after an apology by UUP MLA John McCallister for "unionist failings" in the past (at a Sinn Féin conference in Newry), Frazer reacted furiously.

He also claimed that republicans were behind "old fat cows that are 30 months old" being sold for food before adding that "a blind eye has been turned to it" and that "this is the kind of thing that's going on that we're sick of".

[56] In 2014 Frazer attacked the BBC for having a supposed Gaelic Athletic Association top on the soap EastEnders and that "it glorified terrorism" and the IRA.

[60][61] Shortly thereafter he became spokesman of the "interim committee" of the Ulster People's Forum, one of a number of loyalist umbrella groups established to co-ordinate the protests.

[62] On 27 February 2013, Frazer was arrested by the PSNI in his home village of Markethill, for questioning in relation to organising and participating in illegal parades and protests which were centred on the flags issue.