Leon Flores

Shooting of Adrian Guelke

Flores provided false intelligence reports that led to the shooting of South-African-born lecturer Dr Adrian Guelke at his home in South Belfast on 4 September 1991.

The lecturer was an outspoken critic of the apartheid dictatorship, and many years later he discovered that South African Defence Force (SADF) intelligence branch had doctored details from a leaked RUC Special Branch file, to make him a target for loyalists.

The file, originally about an English-born lecturer working in Northern Ireland, who was a secret link between the IRA and the African National Congress, was revised by a South African agent, Leon Flores, in such a way as to suggest that Guelke was the IRA-ANC link.

Flores flew to Belfast via London in the autumn of 1991, contacted the UDA, and provided its south Belfast brigade with the revised intelligence report.

The UDA fell for his story, and targeted the unfortunate academic a few days later.