The New IRA is defending a infamous knife killer and drug consumer as a result of he's associated to one among its leaders.
Francisco ‘Franco’ Nortarantonio has been boasting he's untouchable due to his household ties to Christopher ‘Cricky’ Notarantonio — a convicted blackmailer and the fear gang’s Belfast chief.
The 35-year-old thug is at present sweating over a return to jail after he appeared in court docket final Thursday to confess stealing a automotive and possessing medication.
Franco Notarantonio pleaded responsible to aggravated car taking and possessing cocaine.
In 2008 he was jailed for fatally stabbing Gerard Devlin Snr throughout a gang assault in Ballymurphy two years earlier. He was freed after five-and-a-half years and lives close to town centre.
Nevertheless, Notaranontio stays a daily customer to west Belfast, the place he has been concerned in violent clashes with members of the Devlin household.
The hated prison is now claiming to have the safety of the New IRA by way of his uncle Cricky Notarantonio.
“Franco has been boasting that if anybody touches him they may get a knock on the door from the New IRA,” a republican supply advised Sunday Life.
“By defending him the New IRA is admitting that it's nothing greater than against the law gang — in spite of everything Franco is a knife killer, automotive thief and druggie.
“His uncle Cricky isn’t a lot better, positive he was convicted of blackmail. Is it any surprise the New IRA is falling aside with a bunch of criminals in cost?”
Cricky Notarantonio, a former Continuity IRA member, turned the New IRA’s Belfast OC after a significant restructuring brought on by the fallout from the publicity of Dennis McFadden as a MI5 agent.
He was was jailed for two-and-a-half years in 2013 for attempting to extort £12,500 from a distinguished Belfast businessman who was operating a sideline in dealing medication. Notarantonio and co-accused William ‘Shirley’ Barker threatened him with the Continuity IRA.
In addition they warned their sufferer, who later fled Northern Eire, that audio recordings of him admitting his involvement within the medication commerce can be leaked to the press until he handed over money.
Since turning into a New IRA chief Notarantonio has recruited a number of convicted criminals and infamous hoods into the fear gang.
He additionally precipitated anger when he pushed for loss of life driver Gerard McCrory to be moved onto the Roe Home segregated dissident republican wing at Maghaberry Jail. The 45-year-old was jailed in Might for drunkenly mowing down 24-year-old Lucy McIlhatton on the Springfield Highway in west Belfast.
Regardless of by no means exhibiting an curiosity in politics, disgraced McCrory was accepted onto the dissident wing as a result of he's a buddy of Cricky Notarantonio.
The pair have been linked to a collection of 2019 assaults on the west Belfast residence of the Richmond household, whose daughter Georgina starred on RTE’s The Voice Of Eire TV present. Pictures have been fired on the property in what the household imagine was an extortion try.