Survivor became no stranger to controversy

One of the men who survived the Sam Marshall killing was in later years charged with a series of republican attacks and became surrounded by controversy.

Colin Duffy, who was 22 at the time of the Lurgan shooting, has faced charges in connection with five republican killings but on each occasion denied the claims and was cleared or had a conviction quashed.

He narrowly escaped death on the night Sam Marshall was shot, with a bullet passing through his trouser leg, as one of the UVF gunmen chased him down a street.

The Lurgan republican later appeared at a Sinn Fein press conference where he made the first of many claims of security force harassment and produced a video camera carrying Ministry of Defence markings, said to have been found in undergrowth near his house.

In January the 44-year-old was acquitted of killing two soldiers who were shot dead by dissident republicans three years ago outside Massereene army base in Antrim.

He left court bearing a long beard grown during his “no-wash” protest against conditions in Maghaberry prison where he had been held.

A glove tip carrying his DNA was discovered in the getaway car but he denied involvement and a judge ruled the evidence was not sufficient to link him to the murder.

He was jailed for the murder of a former soldier in Lurgan, shot dead by the IRA in 1993. But the conviction was quashed after a witness was exposed as being an active member of the Ulster Volunteer Force.