Adair began his paramilitary career in his home area of Belfast, the Protestant Shankill Road. At the time of his arrest he had become the leader of the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) in the district - a position he held during some of the most violent years of UFF activity.
During the early 1990s, one of the bloodiest periods of the Troubles, loyalist paramilitary groups were responsible for more killings than the IRA.
Attacks conducted by Adair's group provoked retaliatory violence from republicans.
The infamous IRA bombing of a fish shop on the Shankill Road in October 1993 was widely believed to have been an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Adair.

Although Adair himself was not there at the time, he arrived soon after the blast.
Within days, a UFF attack on the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel, near Londonderry, claimed seven lives. Adair himself was being questioned by the RUC at the time.
Capture and trial
Ultimately, Adair was undone by his inability to shy away from a public reputation which had led to him becoming the latest in a string of paramilitaries from both sides to earn the street nickname "mad dog".

There have been notorious paramilitaries in the times of Northern Ireland's Troubles. 

But in the era of this peace process, Johnny Adair has become unquestionably the most controversial, high-profile and ubiquitous of them all. 
 
Released in September 1999, after serving barely a third of his 16-year sentence for 'directing terrorism' - a new offence created specifically to secure his conviction - Adair emerged into a world of paramilitary ceasefires, declaring he would be working for his community. 

He had been considered one of the key figures in securing the support of loyalist prisoners for the peace process, when former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam made her audacious visit to the Maze in 1998.He was certainly seen out and about a lot in his community. But by the summer of 2000 - just a few months after his release - he was already considered by the police as a risk to peace. His close ties with the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) - a splinter of the bigger Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) - with its power base in Portadown, County Armagh, led to mounting tensions with the UVF. Adair was seen several times in Portadown, associating with LVF gunmen. He was pictured in Belfast, too, as the city was brought to a standstill with roadblocks and intermittent gunfire as part of a protest at the ban on the Orange Order's Drumcree march along the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road. 

 

But it was the bitter loyalist rivalry which spilled over into the streets of the Shankill area of west Belfast, which proved decisive in Adair's return to prison. Adair has finally been rejected by the mainstream UDA for "acts of treason"and his notorious "C company" disbanded.