An appeal by a man jailed for the 1981 attempted murder of an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment soldier has been rejected by the UK Supreme Court.

Gerry McGeough, from Dungannon, County Tyrone, was jailed in 2011 for 20 years for shooting Samuel Brush.

He argued that a trial judge was wrong to take into account evidence about his IRA membership in the 1970s and 1980s.

However, a panel of five judges at the UK’s highest court of appeal dismissed his claim.

Mr Brush, who is now a DUP councillor, was shot in an IRA gun attack in Aughnacloy, County Tyrone, in 1981.

McGeough was given a 20-year prison term but served less than two, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

The Supreme Court was asked to rule on whether admissions of IRA membership made by McGeough during a Swedish asylum application should have been relied upon during his 2011 trial.

At his trial in Belfast, the judge had decided that he could take that information into account when making decisions on McGeough’s guilt or innocence.

McGeough claimed that the judge had acted unfairly.

He suggested that information he had given to Swedish authorities was confidential and said its use as evidence against him offended a “rule against self-incrimination”.

But the Supreme Court backed the trial judge’s decision and said he had rightly taken what McGeough had said to Swedish authorities into account.

Appeal judges had earlier also ruled against McGeough.