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High-profile loyalist Winston Rea has been charged tonight with two murders.

Mr Rea had been detained for questioning about the killing of John Devine in West Belfast in 1989 and John O’Hara in the south of the city two years later.

This evening the PSNI said that a 65-year-old man has been charged with "a number of offences including two counts of murder" and is due to appear at Laganside Magistrate’s Court in Belfast tomorrow morning, Monday June 6.

Rea had been arrested by detectives from Legacy Investigation Branch in relation to the deaths and “other serious crimes in Belfast”.

John Benedict Devine was killed in the Fallswater Street area of West Belfast on 23 July, 1989, while John Joseph Gerard O’Hara was killed in the Dunluce Avenue area of South Belfast on 17 April, 1991.

Last year, police were given access to interviews Rea, known as ‘Winkie’, gave to the controversial Boston project. He was among dozens of loyalists and republicans who provided testimonies to Boston College staff compiling an oral history of the Troubles.