[Kilsally]

Robert McCartney (1971 – 31 January 2005) was the victim of a murder in Belfast, Northern Ireland, carried out by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He was a father of two small children and was engaged to be married in June 2005 to his long-term partner, Bridgeen Hagans. He was a Catholic and lived in the predominantly nationalist Short Strand area of East Belfast and was known to be a supporter of Sinn Féin, which is closely linked to the IRA.

His killing by IRA members has had extensive political repercussions for Sinn Féin as many people have expressed revulsion to the crime in a way not seen before. Opinion polls, all over the island of Ireland, showed a dip in support for Sinn Fein after the murder, and Sinn Féin lost their council seat in the Short Strand in the local elections in March 2005. However, this drop in support was short-lived.

The fight

Robert McCartney was involved in a fight in a bar — Magennis's — in May Street, in the centre of Belfast, on the night of January 30, 2005. He was found unconscious with stab wounds in Cromac Street and died in hospital the following morning. He was 33 years old.

According to Robert's family, the fight arose when his friend, Brendan Devine, was accused by members of the IRA of making an insulting gesture or comment to a woman in their company. When Devine refused to accept this or apologise, a brawl began. The IRA men dragged them into Verner Street and beat and stabbed them. Devine also suffered a knife attack, but survived. In June 2005, Brendan Devine was sentenced to seven years in prison for taking part in an armed robbery on the outskirts of Belfast.

It is claimed by McCartney's family that the killers issued a threat to all those present not to discuss or report what they had seen. No ambulance was called and the bar was quickly cleaned to destroy forensic evidence. Film from security cameras was removed and destroyed.
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Investigation

When the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) launched a murder investigation they were met with a "wall of silence", with none of the estimated 72 witnesses to the altercation coming forward with information. This is not an unusual attitude among Irish nationalists, who have mixed views of the new police force. In conversations with family members, many potential witnesses claimed to have been in the pub's toilets at the time of the attacks; this led to the toilets being dubbed the TARDIS, after the time machine in the television series Doctor Who, which is much bigger on the inside than on the outside.

Police carrying out search operations in the nationalist Short Strand and Markets areas of Belfast in connection with the investigation were attacked with stones and missiles. Cars were set on fire and some police officers were injured, although such treatment of the police by young nationalists is in no way unusual in Belfast. Several people, including a senior republican figure, were arrested. Sinn Féin claimed that the investigation was being used as an excuse to disrupt the community and accused the PSNI of heavy-handedness. Over a thousand people attended a vigil in memory of McCartney five days after his murder. A similar number attended his funeral.

McCartney's family were among those who publicly stated their belief that Provisional IRA members were responsible for the silence surrounding the murder, with his sister saying, "their cover-up and their clean-up operation afterwards was meticulous." The IRA expelled three members some weeks later. Mark Durkan of the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party also accused the IRA of orchestrating a cover-up, claiming that the "full force of the IRA has been used to intimidate witnesses and prevent the killers from being brought to justice."
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Political fallout

However, Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Féin, urged witnesses to come forward to "the family, a solicitor, or any other authoritative or reputable person or body," also saying, "I want to make it absolutely clear that no one involved acted as a republican or on behalf of republicans." He suspended seven members of Sinn Féin. This stops short of asking witnesses to contact the police directly with information and this approach is consistent with the long standing position of Sinn Féin and tens of thousands of Irish nationalists who have no confidence in the police in Northern Ireland, whether it be the PSNI or its predecessor the RUC. The usefulness of making witness statements to the victim's family or to a solicitor was derided by the McCartneys and by a prominent lawyer and SDLP politician, Alban Maginness, soon afterwards.

Such reference to the Sinn Féin political agenda in response to what was a passionate plea for justice from Robert's family was seen by some to be insensitive at best and potentially indicative of something much more sinister. One opinion piece on this subject from Trudy Rubin of The Philadelphia Inquirer even asks "Has the IRA `morphed into the mob'?" The McCartney family have remained quite firm that they do not wish to become involved in the long political debate over police sectarianism but that their sole aim is legitimate justice administered through due legal process and this is being denied because witnesses are being intimidated by people connected with the IRA and Sinn Féin.

For their part, the PSNI stated that they did not believe the IRA had sanctioned the killing, and that it was carried out by IRA members independently of the organisation's leadership. They later claimed that a very senior IRA man was involved in the murder. The victim's family shared this assessment, claiming that it was the unnamed senior figure who ordered the killing. Gerry Kelly, a high ranking Sinn Féin member of the Northern Ireland Assembly and former IRA bomber, accepted that witness intimidation had occurred, but like Adams he did not call for witnesses to talk to the PSNI. Instead he encouraged those with information who did not trust the police to give it to the Police Ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, or to their own solicitors.

On February 16 the IRA issued a statement denying involvement in the murder and calling on the perpetrators to "take responsibility". McCartney's family welcomed this, but insisted that intimidation and threats had come "from the highest level of Sinn Féin and IRA". Gerry Kelly denied that this had been the case.

The McCartney family has stated that a total of 20 individuals were involved with the murder.

The murder came amidst controversy following the Northern Bank robbery of December 2004, in which £26.5 million was stolen from a bank in Belfast. The belief that this had been carried out by the IRA is widely held, and many lamented that the scandal surrounding alleged IRA involvement in this kind of criminality had overshadowed the scandal surrounding the possibility that its members had killed a man in a pub brawl for no good reason, or had at least tried to cover up the circumstances of his death. The murder and its aftermath resulted in a strong backlash against the IRA in the Short Strand, a nationalist enclave in an overwhelmingly unionist area. The area is traditionally regarded as strongly republican, due in part to its "siege mentality" and history of attacks by unionists, from which the IRA had defended the community and its church, St. Matthew's, when no-one else would. The most famous was in 1969, an action which drew many supporters to its ranks.

On March 8 the IRA issued an unprecedented statement saying that they had made an offer to McCartney's family to shoot the members involved in the murder. The family made it clear that they wanted the people concerned prosecuted, not physically harmed.

On March 9, the Daily Mail named the following men as three of the four men, all members of the Belfast Brigade, whom the PIRA offered to shoot in retaliation for the murder of Robert McCartney - Jim "Dim" McCormack, Gerard "Jock" Davison and Gerard Montgomery. The Mail stated that McCormack, aged about 42, is the Officer Commanding (OC) of the Belfast Brigade of the IRA. It also stated that Davison, 41, is a current and senior member of the Belfast Brigade, and its former OC. According to the Mail, Montgomery — whom it showed in a crowd photograph — is also a long standing PIRA member, and has acted as a bodyguard to both Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. All three men have close ties with Adams.

The Mail also stated that both McCormack and Montgomery shot and killed UFF members and renowned killers of Catholics, Joe Bratty and Raymond Elder in the months running up to the 1994 ceasefire. These murders apparently 'made' them amongst Belfast republicans, and enshrined their reputations as "hard men".

Virtually the same statements were made in the Irish Daily Mirror and the Irish Times, with only the Daily Mail actually naming the men.

In the days running up to 9th March, Davison had made a number of comments posted in Irish and British newspapers denying all and any involvement in the murder of Robert McCartney.

All five McCartney sisters and his partner, Bridgeen Hagans, expressly rejected the IRA's offer to shoot the men, and again asked that the IRA lift their threats against witnesses to McCartney's murder, allowing them to testify to the PSNI. Their cousin, Gerry Quinn, stated that McCartney's family wanted "justice, not revenge."

Since this time, the sisters of Robert McCartney have maintained an increasingly public campaign for justice (through the legal process) which saw Martin McGuinness make a public pronouncement that the sisters should be careful that they were not being manipulated for political ends (this was reported by many news agencies, including the BBC on 14 March 2005). This was interpreted by some as a veiled threat towards the McCartney family.

The McCartney family travelled to the United States during the 2005 St Patrick's Day celebrations where they were met by US Senators and US President George W. Bush who expressed 100% support in their campaign for justice. Meanwhile Gerry Adams was noticeably shunned by politicians, especially Senator Ted Kennedy, who had previously welcomed Adams in an attempt to assist the peace process in Northern Ireland.

On May 5, Terence Davison and James McCormick were remanded in custody, charged with murdering McCartney and attempting to murder Devine respectively. Terence Davison is the uncle of Gerard 'Jock' Davison. McCormick is originally from England.


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Driven Out by Intimidation

The McCartney family had lived in the Short Strand area of Belfast for five generations. However local people in the Short Strand area, which is a largely Nationalist area, did not welcome their dispute with the IRA and drove them to leave by threats of violence. The last McCartney sister to leave the area (Paula) departed Short Strand on the 26th of October 2005.

McCartney Threat Posted On Internet
http://www.newslette....uk/story/20422

Monday 30th May 2005

A threat to the McCartney family posted on a website is being investigated by the PSNI.

A message warning the sisters of the murdered 33-year-old to "shut the hell up with their lies unless they want seriously injured" appeared on an internet page operated by former Sinn Fein public relations officer Danny Morrison.

Posted by an anonymous user under the pseudonym Only I MaTTer, the message criticised the IRA for expelling those believed responsible for stabbing the father of two outside a Belfast bar in January.

It said that people east Belfast's Short Strand were "sick" of the McCartneys, indicating that the author may be from the area.

It is thought that detectives may be able to find the source of the threat by tracing the server from which the email message was sent.

Catherine McCartney said her family was appalled by the level of aggression and abuse in the message.

Before this incident, police had twice contacted the McCartneys regarding other threats to their safety.

* The daughter of " disappeared" victim Jean McConville has tried to contact loyalist paramilitaries in an effort to discover the whereabouts of murdered Co Down woman Lisa Dorrian.

Helen McKendry said that she had met gobetweens for the LVF, the loyalist group suspected of killing the 25-year-old, with the aim of trying to get her body returned.

The shop assistant has not been seen since February 28, when she attended a party at a Ballyhalbert caravan park.

Mrs McKendry and her husband, Seamus, told a Sunday newspaper that they want to arrange talks with the loyalist group to try to get Lisa's body back so that her family can give her a Christian burial.
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