John Weir (loyalist)

John Weir
Born	John Oliver Weir 1950 (age 67–68) County Monaghan, Republic of Ireland
Citizenship	Irish
Occupation	Sergeant in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Officer in the Special Patrol Group (SPG)
Known for	Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Glenanne gang member

John Oliver Weir (born 1950) is an Ulster loyalist born in the Republic of Ireland. He served as an officer in Northern Ireland's Royal Ulster Constabulary's (RUC) Special Patrol Group (SPG) (a tactical reserve unit), and was a volunteer in the illegal Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). As a member of the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade led by Robin "the Jackal" Jackson, Weir was a part of the Glenanne gang, a group of loyalist extremists that carried out sectarian attacks mainly in the County Armagh area in the mid-1970s. Along with his RUC colleague Billy McCaughey, Weir was convicted of the 1977 sectarian killing of Catholic chemist William Strathern and sentenced to life imprisonment. Weir's affidavit which implicated Jackson, other members of the Glenanne gang, soldiers of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), and his colleagues in the RUC and SPG, in a series of sectarian attacks, including the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, was published in the 2003 Barron Report, the findings of an official investigation into the 1974 car bombings commissioned by Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron.

Weir was born in 1950 in County Monaghan, Ireland to Protestant parents on an estate near Castleblayney, where his father was employed as a gamekeeper. He was educated at The King's Hospital, Dublin. Over six feet tall, powerfully built, with blond hair and blue eyes, he had an imposing physical presence, which made him stand out in a crowd.

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