MICHAEL STONE, the crazed loyalist killer arrested at Stormont on Friday in possession of weapons and explosives, had told friends that the only place he would feel safe was in prison.

Following his dramatic arrest at the parliament building, associates of Stone have described him as a tortured man obsessed by the idea that republicans were plotting to kill him with a gun they seized during his attack at Milltown cemetery in 1988.

He had asked police on several occasions to interview him about unsolved murders and murder conspiracies in what seemed to be a campaign to be incarcerated again.

On Friday, he tried to burst into parliament buildings at Stormont armed with an imitation pistol, a knife, a garrotte and eight amateurishly made pipe bombs.

Yesterday he appeared in Belfast’s Magistrates Court charged with attempting to murder Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, and his colleague Martin McGuinness.

Whatever the outcome, Stone looks likely to get his wish and go back to jail. He was released on licence under the Good Friday agreement in 2000 while serving six life sentences, with a recommendation that he spend at least 30 years in prison.

The licence specifies that he can be returned to complete his sentence if he is a danger to the public or if he is suspected of engaging in acts of terror. That is the fate that befell Sean Kelly, an IRA terrorist who bombed the Shankill Road, and Johnny Adair, Stone’s loyalist rival.

Yesterday Adair taunted Stone, saying “now people will say ‘did you see Stoner getting wrestled to the ground by a woman?’, ” a reference to Susan Porter, the Stormont security guard who seized his replica weapon and overpowered him.

Stone’s solo attempt to storm Stormont was described as the “actions of a lunatic” by Sir Hugh Orde, the PSNI chief constable. Former friends of the loyalist killer say that the origins of the attack go back to the day in March 1988, when Stone launched a similar kamikaze-style raid on the funeral of three IRA members shot by the SAS in Gibraltar. Stone’s intention had been to get close enough to Adams and McGuinness to kill them.

On that occasion, Stone had a real gun and succeeded in shooting dead three mourners in Milltown before members of the IRA seized the weapon and the police arrested him.()

Under questioning he confessed to three other murders. He later said he had made up one of these confessions, and had not, in fact, been responsible for the murder of Dermot Hackett, a delivery man shot dead near Omagh in 1987. That case has now been re-opened.

An Ulster Defence Association source said: “Michael had become obsessed with the idea that the IRA were going to shoot him with the gun they captured from him before any peace deal was finally concluded. That is why he turned against the Good Friday agreement after initially supporting it. He was totally paranoid and receiving treatment.”

Stone reacted badly when he heard in jail that the Browning pistol taken from him had been used by the IRA to murder Lance Corporal Roy Butler, an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment officer who was shot while shopping with his wife and children in Belfast city centre in 1988.

After his release, Stone appeared to forget about his phobia. He wrote a book and launched a career as an artist, mainly based on his notoriety. The signature on the back of paintings was the print of his right index finger, which he told buyers was “Michael Stone’s trigger finger”.

In the past year his old demons had returned and he claimed to have heard a republican say in a television interview that his gun might be used to kill him.

He had given up art and had no fixed abode, usually staying with a girlfriend in the Rathcoole estate, Newtownabbey.

A former UDA colleague said: “He saw a deal between the Democratic Unionist party and Sinn Fein coming, and he believes there will not be a deal until he is dead. He has been trying to get put in jail for about the past nine months.”

Stone, 51, who suffers from crippling arthritis, had travelled to London earlier this year where he asked to be interviewed about a number of unsolved murders, including an alleged 1980s plot to murder Ken Livingstone, who was leader of the Greater London council at the time.

He had also challenged police in Northern Ireland to arrest him and had been interviewed at Antrim police station but released. He was starting to be regarded as a nuisance.

Two weeks ago Stone revived the story of his supposed plot to kill Livingstone at a London Underground station and was interviewed by ITN television news in the grounds of Stormont.

Wearing a poppy and walking with the aid of a stick he told the interviewer: “I have regrets about my past. I regret having taken men’s lives during the conflict. I regret not having assassinated Adams and McGuinness and, to be quite honest, I regret not having assassinated Ken Livingstone.”

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