The inquest is due next week of Frankie 'Boogaloo' Mulholland, who was blasted several times at close range as he sat in the driver seat of his Frontera 4X4 after setting up a drug deal with a gang of UFF and LVF killers.

The gang, with close ties to Ihab and Andre Shoukri, set up a £300 cocaine deal with Mulholland in December 2001.

But it's believed that as one gang member chatted to the 6ft 6ins body-building drugs pusher, another man stepped out of the shadows and opened fire.

A short time later the murder was claimed by the Red Hand Defenders, a cover name used by both the LVF and UFF.

Heartless thugs then added to the Mulholland family's grief by targeting the funeral service of the 34-year-old dad-of-two at St Patrick's Church with a hoax bomb warning, also in the name of the RHD.

A pal of Mulholland's, who was in the passenger seat of the car at the time of the horrific murder, survived unhurt but was treated in hospital for severe shock. He was the only known eyewitness to Mulholland's murder and is expected to be called to the coroner's court when the inquest gets under way next week.

At the time of the murder police said Mulholland had made many enemies among both loyalist and republican terror groups.

Sunday Life has previously revealed how he fell foul of ousted UFF commander Johnny Adair after he ripped off the Shankill gangster in a drugs deal.

Mulholland was also high on an hit list of Direct Action Against Drugs (DAAD), a cover name used by the IRA to crackdown on drug dealers.