SAOIRSE32

Belfast Telegraph
Thursday 29, May 2008

Robert McCartney’s best friend has revealed he saw a group of around ten men armed with sticks and bottles following Mr McCartney and another man down a side street on the night of his murder.

Edward Gowdy (40) was giving evidence at the trial of Terence Davison (51) who is accused of stabbing Mr McCartney to death on January 30, 2005 in Belfast. Davison denies the murder and a further charge of causing an affray.

Giving evidence yesterday from behind a screen to conceal his identity, Mr Gowdy said he was amongst a group of men socialising with Mr McCartney (33) in Magennis’ bar in the hours prior to the murder.

Mr Gowdy recalled a “noise and commotion” inside the bar at around 10.30pm. He told Belfast Crown Court: “I can remember a lot of shouting, blood everywhere and people effing and blinding at each other.”

It quickly emerged that Mr McCartney’s friend Brendan Devine had been injured in the fight and was bleeding from a wound to his neck.

The witness said: “I started ushering him up Market Street to get him away.”

He said that as Mr McCartney and Mr Devine were “half way up Market Street” he saw “a crowd of people” walking after them.

Mr Gowdy claimed there were 10 to 12 men — one of whom he identified as Mr Davison.

He said that when he approached the men he was “cracked across the face” with a stick wielded by 39-year-old Joseph Fitzpatrick, who is facing a charge of assaulting Mr Gowdy and of causing an affray on the same date. Mr Fitzpatrick, who Mr Gowdy knew as a doorman at Magennis’, denies both charges.

The trial continues.

BBC

The state must admit to illegal activity which led to the deaths of innocent people, the consultative group on the past has said.

Lord Eames and Denis Bradley co-chair the body

Lord Eames said the security forces had on occasion acted outside the law.

He and co-chair Denis Bradley have outlined key areas that need to be addressed if NI is to move forward.

Lord Eames said that “through handling of intelligence it could even be said innocent people were allowed to die”.

Lord Robin Eames and Denis Bradley will deliver a formal report in the summer to the secretary of state, including a number of recommendations.

The group have held a series of public meetings around Northern Ireland to get different perspectives on how to deal with the past.

Would the republican community like to have to tell an ageing mother that her martyred son was actually an informer?
Denis Bradley

Lord Eames said what many had great difficulty in coming to terms with was that “the state not only sought to be an honest broker during the conflict but also played a combative role and, in this context, sometimes went beyond their own rules of engagement”.

He added: “We cannot ignore that, in fact, the state sometimes acted illegally.”

“If we are to move out of the past in a healthy way then the state itself needs to acknowledge its full and complex role in the last 40 years.”

‘Reconciliation elusive’

The group’s final report would make suggestions on how that could be done, he said.

Mr Bradley said intelligence gathering and using informers was almost inevitable and had saved lives and stopped atrocities.

However, he added: “The scale of the use of informers throughout the conflict corroded the fabric of our communities and the constant pressure now exerted for information about informers to be revealed only serves to further undermine the well being of communities to a degree that could be poisonous.

“Would the republican community like to have to tell an ageing mother that her martyred son was actually an informer? That is what full disclosure could mean.”

He said the group was committed to addressing the legacy of the past “in a way that will promote a greater goal of reconciliation within and between our people”.

“We recognise that reconciliation remains an elusive and contested concept.

“For some of us this will mean being reconciled to the fact that our future is together, that we do share the land and its resources and a common sense of belonging to this place.”

The group said victims may not be able to get justice in the courts because of the passage of time and lack of evidence.

It called on republicans and loyalists to declare that the violence of the past would never happen again.

Sinn Fein said it had boycotted the event because of what it described as the group’s failure to invite republican victims’ groups.

However, a spokesman for the Consultative Group said it had not invited any victims’ groups to the event for fear of missing someone out.