In 1975, 17 year old Alistair Little, a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), murdered a 19 year old Catholic, Jim Griffin by ruthlessly firing three bullets into his head. This happened at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland in a town called Lurgan.

The crime was witnessed by Jim’s younger brother Joe, who was just 11 at the time and shockingly, Jim and Joe’s mother, to the day she died, blamed Joe for not preventing the murder of his brother.

Alistair Little was subsequently arrested two weeks later and spent over 12 years in prison. He’s since become a prominent and ardent peace campaigner but as we were to discover, he has yet to overcome the burden of guilt at what he did… Read more & comment »

James Nesbitt and Liam Neeson star in award-winning director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Five Minutes Of Heaven, a unique one-off drama for BBC Two that explores aspects of Northern Ireland’s troubled past and the challenges the future holds in coming to terms with it.

The story begins in 1975 when 17-year-old Alistair Little, a member of the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) murdered a 19-year-old Catholic, Jim Griffin, in Lurgan. He was arrested two weeks later, along with three others involved in the shooting, and convicted. Jim’s murder was witnessed by his 11-year-old brother, Joe Griffin.

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