Ken Barrett (loyalist)

Ken Barrett (born c. 1963) is a Northern Irish former loyalist paramilitary. A leading figure within the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Barrett was involved in collusion between loyalists and the British security forces during the Troubles.

Barrett was a native of the loyalist Shankill Road area of Belfast and attended the same school as future leader Johnny Adair, Somerdale Secondary School on the Ballygomartin Road (Barrett was, however, a few years above Adair). Barrett joined the UDA some time in the early to mid-1980s and was part of the West Belfast Brigade's B Company which covered the Woodvale area at the top of the Shankill. Barrett quickly gained a reputation within the West Belfast UDA as one of their most zealous gunmen. According to Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack, Barrett became one of RUC Special Branch's paid informers within the UDA in the late 1980s.

According to a fellow UDA member at the time, interviewed by David Lister and Hugh Jordan and identified by them only as "Davy", he and Barrett had collaborated on a number of killings at the time, including that of Paddy McAllister in August 1986, Terry McDaid in May 1988, Gerard Slane in September 1988, and Eamon Quinn in February 1990. The latter killing in particular was the handiwork of Barrett as he had shot the wounded Quinn several times in the head and stomach after he had initially been wounded by "Fat" Jackie Thompson of C Company.

One police detective described Barrett as a "compulsive gambler" and one of the "most cold-blooded killers he had ever met".

It was Barrett's involvement in the murder of Pat Finucane, a Catholic solicitor alleged by loyalists to be in the Provisional IRA, which was to shape his future. According to the aforementioned "Davy", he had joined with Barrett and Johnny Adair on the night of the killing (12 February 1989), to hijack a car from a taxi driver in Glencairn. He claimed that Barrett then drove the car to the Finucane family home and, whilst Barrett sat outside in the driver's seat, Adair and "Davy" forced their way inside and fired fourteen shots in order to kill Finucane. The UDA claimed the killing soon afterwards, describing it as "the execution of Pat Finucane the PIRA officer, not the solicitor".

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