Paul Stitt, 35, from north Belfast, was cleared in March of 28 counts of indecent assault on three boys after a jury failed to reach a verdict. However, he says it isn't safe for him to return to his home in the republican Carrick Hill area.

He has previously received warnings from police that his life is in danger from "republican paramilitaries" whom he believes to be dissidents.

He has written and published a book, The Republican Outcast, which family members are distributing in north Belfast. Stitt says it has cost him thousands of pounds but he is determined to clear his name.

The book opens with Terence MacSwiney's quote: "It is not those who can inflict the most but those that can suffer the most who will conquer".

Stitt dedicates it to his "beautiful little princess", his threeyear-old daughter Tierna.

Police have warned him his life is also in danger from loyalist paramilitaries. Before the sex allegations, Stitt was jailed for 22 years for conspiracy to murder Chief Supt Derek Martindale, one of the North's most senior detectives.

His co-accused included Gerry Adams' cousin Davy.

Under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, Stitt was released after seven years imprisonment.

"I am still a republican, I will always be a republican and I want to go back and live in north Belfast. Attitudes on the ground would change if Sinn Fein issued a statement accepting my innocence.

"Some people, who believe I should have been convicted, say it was a British court and there's never justice in a British court. But if I'd been found guilty, they'd have been happy to accept that verdict."

He said his two trials were very different. "When I was charged with IRA offenses, people went to court to shout 'up the 'Ra', 'good luck', and 'take care'. When I was charged with indecent assault, they were yelling 'we're going to kill you', 'lock him up', and 'hang him'."

It was alleged that, over an 11-year period, Stitt indecently assaulted three boys, two of whom were aged 12 and the third of whom was 14 when the abuse allegedly began. Stitt denied the allegations but admitted having consensual sex with two of the boys when they were over-17.

Stitt has since alleged the boys were "manipulated" into making the claims by 'Mr X', a former republican comrade whom, he claims, left the IRA over his dissident views and with whom Stitt alleges he had political disagreements.

Republican sources dismiss this as "conspiratorial nonsense".

Stitt joined the IRA at 16 and helped found the Carrick Hill Martyrs' Flute band.

When he was released from jail in 2000, he remained a "republican activist".

He canvassed for Sinn Fein, including for Gerry Kelly, and would have liked to have become a councillor himself.

As a community worker, he was involved in preventing nationalist youths rioting along the peaceline. He claimed he hid his sexuality because of prejudice.

"I wouldn't have been taken seriously otherwise. Young lads would have shouted 'f*** off faggot' if I'd have tried to stop them rioting. No matter what it says in Sinn Fein manifestoes, gays aren't treated with respect in our community."

He claimed some individual republicans knew of his sexuality: "I wasn't the only bisexual in the movement".

One of Stitt's accusers claimed he had been abused while visiting Stitt in Long Kesh. When asked about his views on paedophiles, Stitt told the Sunday Tribune: "I don't make anything of them.

It's not something I think about".

After the hung jury, Judge Tom Burgess denied the prosecution a retrial on legal grounds. Stitt said: "I got justice from a British judge whom I'd have regarded as a legitimate target during the war.

"The cops who interviewed me were decent. They had a golden opportunity to get a sworn enemy, who had been jailed for conspiring to murder one of their colleagues, yet they behaved fairly." Stitt says he remains a strong Sinn Fein supporter.