A grieving mum — who watched Ihab Shoukri drive her son to his brutal murder — believes the junkie former UDA brigadier escaped justice when he suffered a suspected drugs overdose.

Barbara McCullough has no doubt about the role Ihab Shoukri played in the loyalist feud murder of her son Alan, luring him to his violent death.

And she remains angry that he was never jailed for the horrific murder.

When Mrs McCullough last saw her son Alan in May 2003 he was driving away from her Denmark Street home in a car with Shoukri and UDA brigadier Mo Courtney.

A week later his body was found dumped in a shallow grave on the outskirts of Belfast.

He had been shot in the head, murdered by the UDA in revenge for siding with Johnny Adair in the bloody loyalist feud that saw Adair’s ‘C’ Company flee to England.

Although Ihab Shoukri had been charged with McCullough’s murder, the charge was later dropped.

His partner in the killing, Courtney, eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter during a third murder trial.

Terror godfather Shoukri died in the early hours of last Sunday after collapsing while watching Ricky Hatton’s world championship fight at a house in Newtownabbey. It’s suspected that his addictions to prescription drugs and cocaine contributed to his death.

When she heard of the death last week of the man she believes was responsible for her son’s murder, Barbara McCullough felt no sympathy.

Said Mrs McCullough: “He escaped justice while he was alive and now he will never be brought to justice for what he did to Alan.

“I can still remember that day that they came for him.

“They were sitting there in the car, just in the bay across the street. It was the two of them and Alan got in the back seat.

“I was making the tea when the phone rang and it was Mo Courtney asking Alan if he was ready. He replied, ‘I’ll just get my coat’.

“I could hear his (Courtney) voice telling Alan to get in the car.

“We never saw him again.

“The same two men, Ihab and Mo Courtney, had Alan out the week before at Corr’s Corner for a meal.

“It was just to suck him in and put him off his guard.”

Mrs McCullough — whose UDA commander husband William ‘Bucky’ McCullough was murdered by the INLA in 1981 — feels no sympathy for Shoukri.

“His family is going through what we went through and his mother now knows what I felt like as a mother losing a son,” she said.

She believes that he had been working for years as a police informant.

“There’s always a bit of hope that his role in Alan’s murder will come out yet. It’s always after people die when it comes out what they were actually doing while still alive,” she added.

“When you look back at Jimmy Craig and Tucker Lyttle it was only after they died that it came out they were police informers.

“It won’t bring Alan back, but the truth might give us rest if we ever get it... we can only hope.

“There are other families that he has made suffer.

“There are all those families of kids down the Shore Road he sold drugs to and whose lives he ruined.

“If that was Ihab’s life, then it wasn’t much of a life.”

Shoukri was buried last Thursday. His funeral in north Belfast — for which his brother Andre was allowed out of jail — was delayed after it was the target of a hoax security alert.