THE UK Government is scrambling to take back an MBE it gave to a convicted Unionist terrorist.
The Belfast Telegraph reported that David Martin is to be stripped of the award he was handed in the New Year Honours list earlier this month.
The UK Government had given him the MBE for "voluntary services to the community in Lurgan, Northern Ireland".
However, his convictions for possessing firearms, false imprisonment, and conspiracy to rob were missed by officials tasked with vetting the award.
Martin was a gunman with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary organisation proscribed as a terrorist group by the UK Government.
The Belfast Telegraph reported that an internal probe has been launched to learn how the Honours and Appointments Secretariat had missed Martin's UVF affiliations before allowing the MBE to go ahead.
That paper said that Martin “has talked at length about his paramilitary past on YouTube testimonials which were missed by the Honours and Appointments Secretariat”.
After being awarded the MBE, Martin told media: “To say I was surprised doesn’t even cover it.”
He was given the award for his work as the chair of the Friends of Brownlow House, an A-listed building reported to be the largest Orange Hall in the world.
Martin is the Orange Order district master in Lurgan and a member of the County Grand Committee, the Belfast Telegraph reported.
