Guardian
Grieving sisters square up to IRA
A staunchly republican district of Belfast may be about to turn in Provos who killed a young father, reports Henry McDonald
Sunday February 13, 2005
The Observer
Wedged against the east bank of Belfast’s River Lagan and surrounded by larger Protestant districts, the Catholic enclave of the Short Strand has long exuded the air of a place under siege.
Attacked on countless occasions by loyalist paramilitaries throughout the Troubles, it has been a bastion of support for the Provisional IRA. The IRA was seen as the defender that repelled a loyalist invasion during a gun battle in 1971 and some of its most ruthless members come from the area. But, for now at least, the people of the Short Strand have turned against them.
The unthinkable is happening. Graffiti has appeared denouncing ‘PIRA scum’; women have stopped youths from rioting against the security forces; shops and businesses are displaying posters from the Police Service of Northern Ireland appealing for help in their inquiries.
This ‘people’s revolution’ against the local IRA is led by five articulate women ranging from their late teens to early forties who want justice for their murdered brother.
Two weeks ago, Robert McCartney, 33, went to a city centre pub for a pint with his friend Brendan Devine. Also drinking in Magennis’s Bar, near the High Court in Belfast, was the core of the Provisional IRA from the Short Strand and nearby Markets and Lower Ormeau districts. The IRA men had returned from Derry and the annual Bloody Sunday commemoration.
Within 10 minutes of McCartney and Devine entering the pub, there was a heated exchange with the IRA men, allegedly over a rude gesture the two made towards some women, an allegation the McCartney family reject.
What happened next was witnessed by 72 people, all of whom would later maintain they saw nothing. After a fight between McCartney and Devine and the IRA members, the leader of the Provos gave a hand signal in the style of a stabbing movement. Then one of thecommander’s underlings, a man in his mid-thirties with a history of extreme violence, went behind Devine, grabbed his face and slit his throat with a knife taken from the bar’s kitchen. McCartney tried to save his friend and got involved in a fracas with the IRA leader.
What was now an all-out attack on McCartney and Devine, involving up to 20 people, spilled on to the street. Knives and at least one gun were produced, along with sewer rods, which the IRA members used to beat the pair. Then the IRA man with a long reputation for thuggery ripped through McCartney’s body with a knife, severing an artery to the heart; Devine was also stabbed twice more, including one wound that ran from his breast to his abdomen.
The five-man IRA gang ran back into the bar and ordered everyone to say nothing. They then slipped out towards the Markets, where republican supporters helped them wash blood from their clothing and footwear. Even the bar was ‘forensically’ cleaned while McCartney and Devine lay bleeding outside. No one rang an ambulance.
Only a passing police patrol spotted the two men on the ground, driving past them at first because they thought they were drunk. When they realised what had happened, the officers rushed McCartney and Devine to hospital.
McCartney clung to life for another eight hours. His five sisters - Gemma, Claire, Paula, Donna and Catherine - watched him die the following day shortly after 8am. Gemma had to telephone her mother, Catherine, on holiday in Spain. Now the sisters are determined to bring his killers to justice - even if that means standing up to the IRA.
‘We are not interested in any kind of revenge,’ said Paula. She and her sisters said they opposed IRA-style justice for those responsible for killing Robert: a bullet in the back of the head. ‘We want these men to give themselves up so we can have a trial - that’s all.’
So far the IRA has failed to urge the five to surrender. Although it did not sanction or plan the killing, there is a widespread belief the IRA is protecting the gang.
The McCartney’s grief is compounded by what they regard as a cover-up. The IRA and its supporters have been sheltering the five men, intimidating witnesses and spreading rumours about their brother.
As Robert’s two young sons, Conlead, four, and Brandon, two, sit on their mother’s lap, the murdered man’s partner, Bridgeen, and his sisters learn that the man who stabbed their brother has fled to Dublin.
Donna McCartney says: ‘The man who ordered them to attack Robert is back walking around this area. He turned up at the funeral of an old republican woman on Wednesday, the day after we buried my brother.’
Two of the sisters, along with Robert, were once Sinn Fein voters, something they say they will never do again. ‘I’d rather vote for the DUP [Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party] than Sinn Fein after this because of the way they have covered up the crime,’ said Gemma McCartney, a district nurse.
Paula and her sisters have been distributing leaflets from the police, which are displayed on every corner of the Short Strand. Paula McCartney will not be driven into submission.
‘If they get away with Robert’s murder, they will think they can get away with anything and that really would be scary,’ she said.
The revolt against the republican movement has reverberated beyond this small quarter of east Belfast. ‘My cousin came over from Chicago for Robert’s funeral and she collects money for Sinn Fein in America. She told me that after what happened to Robert she will not be collecting any more money for them,’ said Gemma.
One thousand people turned up for a protest vigil 11 days ago and a similar number attended Robert’s funeral on Tuesday. Many believe the McCartney killing highlights the general problem facing the republican movement: what to do with the IRA?
Since the ceasefires, with the ‘war’ in effect over, some IRA units have engaged in outright criminality, intimidation and bullying.
The IRA man who stabbed Robert has been the subject of repeated complaints from Sinn Fein supporters. He personifies the group’s evolution over the decade. In one incident three years ago, he was accused of burning a woman’s breast with an iron during a domestic dispute. He was not ‘punished’ by his comrades. Last month, in the Short Strand, the same IRA unit shot a 17-year-old through the hands. His alleged crime was a stabbing.
Other IRA members have expressed their disgust over this IRA unit and others that appear immune from criticism or censure. Former republican prisoners such as Anthony McIntyre say that elements of the IRA are evolving into a ‘Rafia’ - a hybrid term linking the euphemistic word on the street for the Provisionals, ‘the Ra’, and the Mafia. Men who spent decades of their lives in prison because of the ‘armed struggle’ say many in the new IRA are ‘ceasefire soldiers’, post-conflict recruits whose aim is not a united socialist Irish republic, but simply the power to lord over their neighbour.
If the IRA leadership persuades the five to hand themselves in to the police, it will be accused of betraying loyal cadres for political expediency. But if the IRA decides to stand by its men, it risks the wrath of the community and, perhaps, a drop in its vote.
‘We have to believe that they will face a trial because I want the public to see these men and what they have done,’ Paula said.
Among Robert’s sisters there is deep anger over those who aided the killers. ‘These people who washed the clothes and sheltered these men should urge them to give themselves up,’ Gemma said.
They are also perplexed as to why no one from Magennis’s Bar has rung to express their condolences. Although the 72 people who saw the fight have been warned off, the code of silence in Short Strand has been broken.
Brendan Devine, under armed police guard in Belfast’s Royal Hospital, has told the McCartney sisters he will identify the five men if they are arrested. By doing so he is putting himself in further danger. Robert’s friends and relations have written letters to the local press urging the five to come forward. The women are to raise a petition calling on the people of the Short Strand to support the family’s campaign. In an act of defiance, the women posted the police appeal through the letterbox of the home of one of the suspects.
At the bottom of Mountpottinger Road, one of the main routes through the Short Strand, fresh graffiti has appeared criticising recent attempts by the British and Irish governments to link the IRA to the Northern Bank robbery. Gerry Adams, who has insisted that there are no criminals inside the IRA, echoed this sentiment.
Paula McCartney is not impressed by these denials: ‘I would like to ask him [Adams] if what happened to Robert wasn’t a crime.’
