Loyalist terrorists last night stood accused of brutally murdering a leading Catholic figure in Gaelic sport in Northern Ireland.

Mr Sean Brown, a 61-year-old civil servant, was abducted from the Gaelic Athletic Association club in the County Londonderry village of Bellaghy, shot in the head and his body dumped beside his blazing car 10 miles away.

His death was the third in a week as sectarian hatred again threatened to spiral.

It came on the day a policeman shot dead in a Belfast public house by the republican INLA was buried by his family.

There was no claim of responsibility for Mr Brown's murder, as has become the norm in recent loyalist attacks. A political spokesman for the paramilitaries admitted their ceasefire is ''fraying around the edges'' but insisted it is still in place.

The RUC said the vicious murder of the sports club chairman had ''all the hallmarks of a sectarian attack'', meaning it was carried out by loyalists.

Meanwhile, how the Government handles the issue of jailed terror suspect Roisin McAliskey is ''crucially important'' to the Northern Ireland peace process, Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness said yesterday.

The newly-elected MP claimed pregnant Ms McAliskey, 25, who is wanted in Germany on bombing charges, is being kept in ''inhuman and degrading'' conditions in north London's Holloway Prison as she fights extradition moves.

He told a news conference he was ''hopeful and optimistic'' about the opportunities for peace brought about by the change of government. But he said Labour's response to what he called political prisoners, like Miss McAliskey, was vital.

Meanwhile, she was too ill yesterday to appear at Bow Street Magistrates Court in London and magistrate Ronald Bartle remanded her in custody until June 10, after reading an obstetrician's report.

Miss McAliskey, who is wanted in connection with an IRA mortar bomb attack on a British Army base at Osnabruck, faces extradition.