Paramilitary hitman linked to British right-wing group Turning Point UK

A violent paramilitary linked to a proscribed terror group has close ties to a right-wing student group in the United Kingdom, an Al Jazeera investigation has revealed.

Allan Nesbitt, a convicted criminal who is a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), is linked to Turning Point UK (TPUK).

Our investigation, Contract Killers and the Far Right, began in 2021, when an undercover reporter from Al Jazeera joined TPUK, an independent offshoot of the right-wing US activist group Turning Point USA. TPUK has close ties to several senior British Conservative Party members, as well as to leaders of Reform UK.

TPUK’s CEO Jack Ross stood as a Conservative Party candidate in 2023. Ross introduced Al Jazeera’s undercover reporter to Nesbitt, who is from Glasgow, Scotland.

Ross made clear that he and Nesbitt had a long history together. Ross was filmed by our undercover reporter agreeing to pay Nesbitt thousands of pounds to stage a fake political rally designed to show support for the lifting of UK sanctions against Zimbabwe.

Ross also told Al Jazeera’s undercover operative that for “a certain amount”, Nesbitt and his contacts could arrange physical attacks, saying they could “kick the f*** out of someone. They can start cutting people’s faces up. That’s another amount. They can stab someone,” Ross said. “They can shoot someone. They could kill someone.”

Murder for hire, caught on tape

To test Ross’s claims about Nesbitt, Al Jazeera’s undercover operative devised a story about a business dispute with a fictional rival they wanted “dealt with”.

In a private meeting in a London hotel, Nesbitt told our reporters he could “arrange whatever you need done”, but “at a price”. This included killing the fictional person with the help of his UVF connections.

“He can have a bad accident,” Nesbitt said, confirming to Al Jazeera that the person would be “finished”.

“These c***s are terrorists. They’re f***ing trained killers,” Nesbitt added.

Nesbitt also claimed to have personally killed before.

“Things have happened in the past where it was too risky to do that [gestures firing a gun], and I’ve just pulled out a knife and stabbed the c*** to death,” he said.

In a later video call, Nesbitt showed off a shotgun, a pistol, and live ammunition to prove he had the means to follow through.

Weapons smuggling

The money paid for the murder would be used to arm the UVF in Northern Ireland, Nesbitt said.

“All the money gets raised in Scotland and the things get bought in Scotland and we smuggle them into Ireland.”

According to Nesbitt, he has been involved in this weapons smuggling for many years.

“It’s us that smuggled the stuff into Ireland for them to fight the war in there,” he said, referring to The Troubles.

During that period, which began in the late 1960s, Catholic and Protestant groups in Northern Ireland fought over whether Protestant-majority Northern Ireland should remain part of the UK or join the Catholic-majority Republic of Ireland.

Those in favour of Northern Ireland remaining a part of the UK are widely known as unionists or loyalists. Those seeking to break from the UK usually identify themselves as republicans or Irish nationalists.

The UVF belonged to the Protestant loyalist side and was responsible for some of the most infamous killings and murders during The Troubles, according to Patricia Devlin, a journalist who has been investigating the group for years.

“Between 1966 and 1999, the UVF killed over 500 people,” she told Al Jazeera.

“They went on to commit atrocities such as the 1971 McGurk’s bar bomb massacre, which killed 15 people, and the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which killed 33 people”, she added.

But after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that at least officially ended the Troubles, the UVF, like many other groups, transformed into a more traditional criminal gang.

“The movement has turned into drug gangs, while still using the name of the UVF,” Devlin said.

To Roy McComb, former deputy director of the UK’s National Crime Agency, Nesbitt’s claims are no surprise.

“The history of loyalism between Northern Ireland [and] Scotland is a very strong and very longstanding one.

“Operationally, there’s certainly evidence previously of firearms being trafficked, of intelligence being shared, of activists being moved between the two countries [Scotland and Northern Ireland].

“Firearms … are simply tools that can be sold and that could be sold onto the far right.”

Far-right groups

Besides links to the UVF, Al Jazeera’s investigation also shows links between Turning Point UK and other far-right agitators in the UK. These include groups that have been at the forefront of protests against migrants and LGBTQ+ rights.

“Turning Point UK are fanboys of these kinds of people. These people are obviously a lot more physically tough than Turning Point UK. Turning Point UK know that they put these little, no far right allowed at the bottom just to protect themselves,” Ciaran O’Connor, senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told Al Jazeera.

“They use these events as wedge issues upon which to try and mobilise their support and try and attack the message or the meaning of the other side, and demonise the housing of asylum seekers in society,” he added.

A former member of the UVF told Al Jazeera that the “far right in the UK is a toothless tiger”, but links between the far right and groups like the UVF could change that.

“It changes whenever you make a connection to individuals who are behind a terrorist campaign for probably 40 years, and are still armed, and still have the ability to shoot and bomb,” the former UVF member said.

“Then you’re in trouble.”

Al Jazeera notified Scottish police about Allan Nesbitt and his weapons in the interest of public safety.

Jack Ross denied our findings “completely”, telling us that everything he said to our undercover reporter was not meant seriously.

The other parties featured did not respond to our inquiries.

See the full Al Jazeera investigation here