Thread: IRA Offers to Kill Own Members

IRA's Offer to Kill 4 Draws Outrage
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - President Bush's envoy to Northern Ireland called Wednesday for the IRA to disband after the outlawed group made an unprecedented public offer to kill four men - including two of its own expelled members - linked to a Belfast slaying.

The envoy, Mitchell Reiss, told BBC radio in Belfast that the IRA's allied Sinn Fein party should accept the legitimacy of the police force. ``It's time for the IRA to go out of business. And it's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say that explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated,'' Reiss told the BBC in the interview from Washington.

The Irish Republican Army, which is supposed to be observing a 1997 cease-fire in support of Northern Ireland's peace process, has faced weeks of embarrassment over its members' role in killing a Catholic civilian, intimidating witnesses and destroying evidence. The case highlights the IRA's decades-old practice of seeking to impose its authority on the most hard-line Catholic parts of Northern Ireland.

The victim's family, which lives in an IRA power base in east Belfast, has waged a rare public campaign demanding that the IRA admit its involvement in killing Robert McCartney, 33, and encouraging witnesses to give evidence to police.

The McCartneys' stand has forced the IRA to make a string of admissions, culminating in Tuesday night's declaration it had offered to kill four people the IRA blames for the Jan. 30 killing outside a Belfast pub.

The British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, both denounced the IRA's offer as bizarre. ``It's an extraordinary statement and a shock to the system,'' Ahern said in Dublin.

Reiss specifically chided Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams for his remarks during his speech Saturday to the party's annual conference. Adams, reflecting traditional IRA-Sinn Fein policy, claimed the movement wouldn't tolerate criminals in its ranks. He immediately qualified that position, arguing that the IRA wasn't committing crimes when it broke laws ``in pursuit of legitimate political objectives.''

Analysts say that view justifies virtually all of the IRA's activities, including its robberies, fuel smuggling and policy of maiming petty criminals within the IRA's Catholic power bases.

Reiss said he found that comment ``particularly worrisome. "You can't sign up for the rule of law a la carte.''

Ahern said the IRA had a history of using death threats as a way of maintaining order. ``But when you actually see it in written form ... it's horrific,'' he said.

``The IRA statement yesterday frankly defies any description,'' Blair told the House of Commons in London.

Blair said the IRA had revealed why both governments and every other political party in both parts of Ireland were demanding the IRA fully disarm and disband. ``We have made considerable progress in Northern Ireland,'' he said, referring to the peace process and the Good Friday peace pact of 1998. ``But we now have an impasse because of the refusal of the IRA to give up violent activity of whatever sort.''

Detectives trying to bring charges against McCartney's killers said they have arrested a man on suspicion of involvement. The man appeared voluntarily at a police station, accompanied by a lawyer.

Nobody has been charged yet. Police say 10 people previously arrested on suspicion of involvement have refused to make any statements while in custody and been released without charge.

Northern Ireland's police commander, Chief Constable Hugh Orde, said he didn't need the IRA to tell his officers who killed McCartney. He did need members of the public to feel safe enough to testify - because the IRA traditionally kills anybody who informs on IRA activities to police. ``We know the names of the suspects. Many people claim to be supplying those, but police work has identified those responsible,'' Orde said. ``What the police need are witnesses willing to come forward ... and give evidence in court. That's the way the law works.''

McCartney's relatives also said the IRA still doesn't get their point. "Revenge is not what the family are looking for. We want justice,'' said Gerard Quinn, a cousin of the slain man.

An aunt, Margaret Quinn, said the IRA didn't respect the right to secure criminal convictions in court. ``Killing somebody is irreversible,'' she said. ``At the moment these people are suspected. To kill suspects - how would anyone ever know if those suspects were the people who were involved?''


Other politicians accused IRA-Sinn Fein leaders of continuing to cover up the movement's full role in the killing. The IRA statement Tuesday said just four people, including two IRA members, were involved in the killing; previously the IRA has expelled three members allegedly involved, while Sinn Fein has suspended seven members.

03/09/05 10:04

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...20050308BFT02D

Slain Catholic's sisters lead firestorm against IRA
Wed Mar 9, 9:40 2005
By Tom Hundley Tribune foreign correspondent

The $50 million robbery of Belfast's Northern Bank a week before Christmas, the biggest heist in the annals of British crime, was the kind of audacious Robin Hood caper that enhanced the mystique of the Irish Republican Army

But the ugly Belfast pub brawl that resulted in the slaying of a 33-year-old Catholic man by members of the IRA has seriously tarnished the organization's image among its grass-roots Catholic supporters, especially after the victim's five sisters defied the IRA's unwritten code of silence and publicly demanded that their brother's killers be brought to justice.


The Jan. 30 murder of Robert McCartney has underscored the increasing criminality of the IRA and dealt a serious blow to the electoral chances of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing.


It also has isolated Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and turned the McCartney sisters into local heroes. Adams has not been invited to the traditional St. Patrick's Day celebration at the White House later this month; instead, President Bush has extended the honor to the McCartney sisters and the victim's fiance, Bridgeen Hagans. "The support of the White House in our quest for justice will be a big help," said Paula McCartney, a 40-year-old mother of five and part-time university student who has emerged as the family's spokeswoman.


In an extraordinary admission of just how damaging the incident has become for the IRA, its leadership issued a statement Tuesday saying it had met with the McCartney sisters and offered to impose a "punishment shooting" on the four men it says were directly responsible for McCartney's death.


Two of the four are said to be IRA members. Punishment shootings are the IRA's preferred method of rough justice. Normally they are not fatal.


The sisters rejected the offer.


Exactly what triggered that argument in Magennis' Pub on the night of the fatal brawl remains in dispute. McCartney, an amiable forklift operator, and his friend Brendan Devine, a club boxer with a reputation for brawling, got into an altercation with the IRA group over an alleged insult to a woman in the pub.


By most accounts, McCartney, an amateur bodybuilder and occasional nightclub bouncer, tried to act as peacemaker. But knives were drawn and Devine's throat was slashed. When McCartney tried to drag his friend from the bar, they were followed outside by a dozen men with knives and metal pipes.


Devine's torso was sliced open and McCartney was stabbed in the chest. Both were savagely beaten and left for dead. Devine survived, but McCartney didn't. The IRA men then returned to the pub, wiped it down to remove fingerprints, mopped up the blood and destroyed the film from the pub's security cameras. The 70 or so patrons in the pub were advised, "This is IRA business."

The message was crystal-clear, but the McCartney sisters refused to be intimidated. "We didn't really think about it. We just knew it was the right thing to do," said Paula McCartney. The other sisters are Gemma, 41, a nurse; Donna, 38, who runs a catering business; Catherine, 36, a history teacher; and Claire, 26, a teacher's aide.

The sisters' demand that the IRA be held accountable for the slaying has sent shock waves through this bleak, working-class neighborhood known as the Short Strand.

A Catholic enclave of about 3,000 residents in the heart of predominantly Protestant East Belfast, the Short Strand is ringed by a 30-foot-high "peace wall," a concrete-and-steel reminder of the hatreds that endure despite the Good Friday peace agreement.

In the decades before the 1998 peace deal, Short Strand residents--the McCartney family among them--viewed the IRA not only as their protectors from Protestant paramilitaries, but also as the enforcers of law and order within the Catholic community.

Criminal enterprise growing

Under terms of the Good Friday agreement, the IRA should have disarmed and disbanded several years ago. Instead the gunmen have turned themselves into an increasingly Mafia-like crime organization, specializing in drug dealing, extortion, money laundering and the occasional bank robbery.

"Fundraising" was how IRA sympathizers complacently characterized such activities. But the McCartney slaying has ended the complacency. More than 1,000 people attended his funeral.

The IRA, under pressure from the sisters, last week announced the expulsion of three members. The sisters gave Sinn Fein leader Adams a list of seven more alleged accomplices.

Adams, who acknowledges he personally knows some of those on the list, has suspended them from Sinn Fein and handed the list to a police ombudsman, an act tantamount to treason by IRA lights. Adams also has said witnesses should come forward.

But so far, none have.

"Obviously, people are being intimidated," said Paula McCartney. "We've spoken to some of the witnesses. They say they've been told to go to the police with this concocted IRA version of the story. "A couple of witnesses we spoke to were Robert's friends," she said, "and they were visibly petrified."

What most galls the sisters is that the IRA men who killed their brother are well-known in the community and still seem to enjoy a privileged status. "These people . . . are going about their daily lives like nothing happened. You can see them having a pint in the local pub," Paula McCartney said.

Joe O'Donnell, the Sinn Fein city councilor for the Short Strand, praised the sisters for their courage but said he also understood why witnesses were reluctant to come forward. "I understand the reality of what it is like to live in a community that suffered for 35 years at the hands of the police," he said. "But we want people who have information to come forward, and we're telling them that if they have this difficulty [going to the police], then they should go to a priest or a [lawyer]."

In its statement Tuesday, the IRA said it had spoken to key witnesses and told them they had nothing to fear.

The McCartney mess couldn't come at a worse time for Sinn Fein. The peace process has been suspended since 2002, when police discovered that the IRA was operating a spy ring inside the Northern Ireland government offices. The process was dealt a further setback after authorities blamed the IRA for the spectacular $50 million robbery of Belfast's Northern Bank just before Christmas.

Although no one has been charged in the robbery and the IRA denies any involvement, police investigators have uncovered a massive IRA money-laundering operation in the Republic of Ireland.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern has accused Adams and his top deputy, Martin McGuinness, of being senior commanders in the IRA--something they always have denied--and suggested they may have known about plans to rob the bank. Ahern and other politicians in the south, once staunch backers of Sinn Fein, have moved to distance themselves from Adams. And now, so has the White House.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), following the White House's lead, also scratched Adams from the guest list of the speaker's annual St. Patrick's Day luncheon. Adams bound for U.S. Next week, Adams is scheduled to visit several U.S. cities--but not Chicago--as part of Sinn Fein's regular fundraising activities in Irish-American communities. The trip is still on, but fundraisers have been canceled.

Last weekend, Sinn Fein held its centenary party conference in Dublin. It should have been a valedictory moment for Adams. Sinn Fein has emerged as the largest nationalist party in Northern Ireland, and before the McCartney killing, it seemed poised for strong electoral gains in the south as well.

But instead, Adams was on the defensive. He tried to salvage the situation by inviting the McCartney sisters to sit with him in the front row at the conference. "Those responsible for the brutal killing of Robert McCartney should admit to what they did in a court of law," Adams told the party faithful. "I am not letting this issue go until those who have sullied the Republican cause are made to account for their actions."

The sisters did not applaud. They later said that while they appreciated Adams' words, they would hold their applause until their brother's killers were brought to court.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...tormagainstira

Murdered Irishman's kin to tell Bush "true story"

WASHINGTON, March 15 (Reuters) - Six Northern Ireland women who challenged the Irish Republican Army over the murder of a Catholic man said on Tuesday they will tell U.S. President George W. Bush the "true story" of how the killers are eluding justice under the cloak of the IRA.

The five sisters and fiancee of the murdered man, Robert McCartney, arrived in Washington and will meet with Bush on Thursday at the annual St. Patrick's Day reception at the White House. McCartney, a 33-year-old forklift truck driver, was beaten and stabbed to death outside a bar in Belfast in January by a gang that included a number of IRA members.

His sister, Catherine McCartney, told reporters the family would tell Bush about her brother and their campaign to bring his killers to court. "The only thing that's stopping us getting the murderers brought to justice is secrecy, collusion and cover-up," she said. "And we're going to be raising that with the president an letting him know the true story."


She said her brother's killer's were accountable to no one and the romanticized version of the IRA battling against British rule in Northern Ireland is no longer real, McCartney said. "We're now dealing with criminal gangs who are still using the cloak of romanticism around the IRA to murder people on the streets and walk away with it," she said, adding that was the message they intend to take to Americans who have political and financial influence in Ireland.


The White House broke with long-standing policy of embracing Northern Ireland politicians and did not invite Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to this year's St. Patrick's Day celebration. Adams was also snubbed by Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who has been a strong Sinn Fein supporter.


Sinn Fein is the political ally of the IRA, which declared a cease-fire in 1997.

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...5irish_sisters

03/15/05 23:05

Irish sisters meet with Bush
Thursday, March 17, 2005


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The sisters of a Belfast man allegedly killed by IRA members met with the U.S. president at a St. Patrick's Day event.

President George W. Bush greeted the five sisters and fiancee of Robert McCartney, who was killed outside a Belfast bar on January 30, at a White House event Thursday that excluded Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA, for the first time since 1995. McCartney's family blames the IRA for their brother's death. They say the gang that attacked him included known IRA members.

Paula McCartney said Thursday morning the purpose of the meeting with Bush was to ask him to "bring all his influences to bear ... particularly on Sinn Fein, who we believe have the power to deliver the murderers up and to get justice for Robert." "If justice is delivered in our case then the people of Ireland are going to feel that the peace is not just going to be something signed on a piece of paper, that it's a reality on the streets," Catherine McCartney said. Their message to Bush, she said is that "justice for us is also justice for Ireland."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush thanked the McCartney family for their courage and told them the United States would do whatever it can to help bring their brother's killers to justice. "I'm not sure what has been asked of us at this point, but we stand ready to assist in helping the parties move forward on a comprehensive peace agreement," McClellan said.

On Wednesday, the six women met with prominent U.S. senators who condemned the killing of the 33-year-old Roman Catholic forklift operator.

The Irish Republican Army has suspended a number of members over the killing and offered to shoot those it had found responsible.

That offer sparked outrage across the globe, and McCartney's sisters rejected it, saying they wanted those responsible brought to justice. To date, no one has come forward with evidence in the slaying, prompting some people in Northern Ireland to suspect the IRA intimidated witnesses into keeping quiet.

Sen. Edward Kennedy was among five politicians who told reporters after meeting the McCartneys they would stand with the sisters and learn more from them. "Today isn't just one meeting, but is going to be a continuum, until we are able to see justice and those who were a part of this cruel and murderous act are brought to justice," Kennedy said.

Kennedy said he believes Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams "wants to see the IRA disbanded" for the good of the stalled Northern Ireland peace process. Sinn Fein is a political party closely linked with the IRA. "There is a time to hold 'em and a time to fold 'em," the senator said. "And we're overdue in terms of the disbandment of the IRA."

Barring this breakup, he said, Sinn Fein must step away from the militant republican group. "A democratic party, a part of a democratic West, does not, should not and cannot have private armies and cannot be involved in criminality and violence," Kennedy said.

Public snub for Adams in U.S.

Adams also is visiting the United States this week in an attempt to soften the damage to his party's reputation caused by the killing and a $50 million bank robbery in December that British authorities blame on IRA members.

Adams is a member of the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly, the parliament created under the Good Friday Peace Accords in 1998. In February, the Irish government identified Adams as an IRA commander, an accusation that he has long denied.

Adams was not invited to meet Bush or Kennedy. The senator often has seen the Sinn Fein leader during previous St. Patrick's Day visits to the United States.

Kennedy said he does not believe Adams was involved in protecting the identity of McCartney's killers. But he called on Adams and Sinn Fein to "free themselves from the albatross of the IRA."

Adams said the public snub disappointed him but that he didn't feel it indicated U.S. support for the Northern Ireland peace process was waning. "I support the McCartney family. I support their demand for justice," Adams said Thursday. "I think that there is an onus upon everyone who can help, to help. So good luck to them. And when I go back home I will continue to work on their behalf."

As for being excluded from the annual Shamrock Ceremony,"All the Irish political parties were disinvited from the White House, not just Sinn Fein," Adams said. "And if I was to read that as a disengagement by this administration from the peace process, I would be concerned. But it isn't."

Adams has condemned McCartney's killing and blasted "rogue" members of the IRA. He said the perpetrators have tarnished the Irish republican movement and should be "man enough" to turn themselves in to authorities.

Sinn Fein has said that two of its election candidates were in the bar at the time of the killing, but both said they didn't see anything, according to The Associated Press.

CNN's Anne Castellani contributed to this report.


http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe...eys/index.html