A BELFAST man who took his own life had been beaten by the IRA and questioned about drugs dealings, an inquest heard yesterday.
Mr Edward McCloskey (31), of Strathroy Park, in north Belfast, was found dead inside his car on November 7th from carbon monoxide poisoning.
A plastic hose was connected to the exhaust system.
His widow, Ann, said that three months earlier while she and her husband were making deliveries for a Chinese takeaway, three men had stopped them and taken their car, beaten her husband and questioned him about drugs.
This, she said, had a major bearing on his death, which the Belfast coroner found was carried out by his own act.
The dead man's brother, Stephen, who claimed the men who had attacked and threatened his brother were from the IRA, denied Edward was in any way involved in drugs. His beating had upset him terribly.
The coroner, Mr John Leckey, concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that Mr McCloskey had been involved in any way with drugs.
The president of Young Alliance, Mr Richard Good, said it was not the first time that a young man had taken his life after an IRA "punishment" attack.
He pointed to the case of Malachy Clark (17) who killed himself in December 1994, two months after he was beaten up for alleged glue sniffing.
These cases highlight the need to end mob rule in our community and for every effort to be made to move away from the culture of violence which most young people in Northern Ireland have known all their lives."