Loyalists and Republicans 'puzzled by plot to kill Adair and McCrory.
Loyalist and Republican dissidents are both "bewildered" about the plot to kill Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair and Sam "Skelly" McCrory.
Three men were found guilty of a murder plot to gun down the two former Loyalist paramilitary leaders after a nine-week trial at the High Court in Glasgow.
Anton Duffy, Martin Hughes and Paul Sands were tracked for ten months by security services and police as they planned the assassinations.
However, one author who wrote a book on the UDA, has said news of the plot has caused "puzzlement" on both sides of the divide in Northern Ireland.
Henry McDonald, co-author of Inside the heart of Loyalist Terror, said: "There is bewilderment among Loyalists about what this was all about.
"I was surprised any Republican dissident group would want to carry out a major operation in Scotland.
"It's highly unusual and there puzzlement about who these people were among dissident Republicans in Derry."
Asked what the ramifications would have been if the plot was successful, Mr McDonald said: "The Loyalist community here in Ireland would have seen that as a new shift by the Republican movement.
"If it was successful that would have been a major shift, even though they (Adair and McCrory) were forced out of Belfast at gunpoint by their own comrades.
"Republican dissident groups have avoided deliberately targeting Loyalists, it has not been a policy of Republican groups so who knows, there would have perhaps been retaliation."
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