Monday, February 28, 2005

Glenn Frankel: Sisters Shatter Code of Silence in IRA Killing

Sisters Shatter Code of Silence
In N. Ireland Catholics Name IRA Members In Savage Pub Slaying of Kin
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 28, 2005; Page A11

BELFAST -- The drinks were flowing and tempers were high one Sunday night in late January at Magennis's pub when things got out of hand. One man accused another of insulting his girlfriend, witnesses said. Someone grabbed a knife and slit the alleged offender's throat. A friend of the victim intervened and was stabbed and savagely beaten. When it was over, he lay dying outside on the sidewalk, the other man unconscious and bleeding beside him.

But this was more than just a fatal bar fight. The dead man was Robert McCartney, 33, who was well-respected among people in his small Catholic neighborhood known as the Short Strand, a flash point for sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants in this divided city. And what was most extraordinary was the allegation, made by his five sisters, that McCartney was killed by fellow Catholics from the neighborhood who are leading members of the Irish Republican Army, the outlawed paramilitary organization.

The IRA is a secret organization and the usual punishment for breaking its code of silence is death. But the sisters defiantly named names and directly challenged the IRA and its political wing, Sinn Fein, to help bring the alleged killers to justice. The family's campaign has shamed and embarrassed the movement to the point that on Friday, the IRA broke years of tradition by announcing it had court-martialed and expelled three members. In an unprecedented statement, the organization ordered the men "in the strongest terms possible to come forward and to take responsibility for their actions."

Hundreds of people gathered in Belfast on Sunday to protest the killing, the Associated Press reported.

The McCartney sisters said Saturday that they were encouraged by the IRA's action but stuck to their demand that those involved turn themselves in to the police. "The only way our family will know the truth is when we hear witness statements in a court," Catherine McCartney told reporters.

For generations the IRA's role was to defend and protect Catholics in beleaguered enclaves such as the Short Strand from attacks by Protestants. But the McCartney sisters have accused IRA leaders in their neighborhood of turning into a thuggish mob that terrorizes the area.

"What's unusual and incredibly powerful here is that you have a family of that community, in that community and who know the history of that community, who have come forward," said Denis Bradley, a Catholic civil rights activist and member of the citizens board that oversees policing here.

In recent weeks Sinn Fein and the IRA -- known collectively as the republican movement -- have faced a political crisis following allegations that the IRA was responsible for a $50 million bank robbery in Belfast in December and that it was carried out with the knowledge of Sinn Fein's political leaders.

But local observers say the McCartney killing has done far more harm to the movement with its core constituency in Northern Ireland -- the thousands of working-class Catholics in urban areas who supported and identified with the IRA during the three decades of sectarian violence known as the Troubles, during which more than 3,000 people were killed.

About 3,000 Catholics live in the Short Strand, a collection of modest two-story rowhouses wedged into the western flank of predominately Protestant East Belfast. For decades it has been the scene of periodic clashes. In the early 1980s, the authorities constructed a 30-foot-high "peace wall" of bricks and metal bars topped by steel-webbed fencing along Bryson Street to seal off the two communities. A mural painted at the far end of the wall reads "Love Thy Neighbor."

The predominately Protestant police force, known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary, was seen as part of the machinery of oppression, and the gothic red brick police station on Mountpottinger Road still lurks behind a 40-foot-high barrier designed to protect the police from the neighborhood.

In the law-and-order vacuum, the men of the IRA not only protected Catholics from Protestant incursions but also enforced social order among residents. Those caught dealing drugs or assaulting women were subjected to beatings, "punishment shootings" or enforced exile from the area.

Ever since the IRA first declared a cease-fire in 1994, life and politics here have slowly changed. The police have a new name -- the Police Service of Northern Ireland -- and a new motto: "Making Northern Ireland safer through professional, progressive policing." At the same time, residents said, the IRA has begun to lose its grip on the area. One member was accused of rape, another of throwing his girlfriend from a balcony.

"Some of these guys are psychopaths, but no one does anything to stop them," Paula McCartney, one of Robert's sisters, said in an interview last week at her home in the Short Strand. "They're likened to the Mafia -- but frankly that's an insult to the Mafia."

Robert McCartney, a father of two young sons, was a forklift operator and a bodybuilder, and at nights he worked as a doorman at a well-known nightspot. His sisters said he was a Sinn Fein voter and a gentle, soft-spoken man, but he was not inclined to back down when challenged. They said he had several run-ins with IRA people, including one man known here as a former IRA local commander.

On the night of Jan. 30, McCartney met two friends for drinks at Magennis's, located just across the Albert Bridge in the city center. A number of known republicans had gathered there as well, having just returned from a commemoration in the city of Derry to mark the 33rd anniversary of Bloody Sunday, in which 14 protesters were gunned down by the British soldiers.

The sisters said witnesses told them that Brendan Devine, one of McCartney's friends, became embroiled in a confrontation with the former commander over an alleged rude gesture to a girlfriend. "Do you know who I am?" the man bellowed at Devine.

The man signaled to one of his companions, who came up behind Devine and slit his throat. McCartney sought to shield Devine from further assaults and dragged his friend out to the sidewalk. Paula McCartney said her brother pleaded with Devine's attackers. "No one deserves this," she quoted him as saying.

More than a dozen men followed them outside, some armed with knives and metal sewer rods. Someone stabbed McCartney in the heart while others pounded his face and head. They left his body and that of Devine on the pavement.

Then a cleanup of the evidence began. Paula McCartney and her sisters said they have talked to witnesses who said the killers announced to customers after the fight, "This is IRA business."

With professional skill, the men carried off the weapons and bloody clothing, wiped fingerprints clean, confiscated videotape from a security camera and warned bystanders, "No one is to say anything."

The IRA's account, released in its statement, is similar to that of the sisters, except it says an unnamed "senior republican" was also stabbed in the bar and was taken to a hospital.

Brendan Devine survived and has told the sisters he will testify if the case comes to trial. The other friend who was present maintains he saw nothing after the argument began. There were 70 people at the bar that night, Paula McCartney said, but their silence is deafening. She said the IRA men involved disappeared for a while, but were seen walking the streets of the Short Strand last week. Seven people were arrested, but all of them have been released.

"I live here and I know the mentality of the area," Paula McCartney said. The IRA leader's "very presence here is a threat. He doesn't have to say anything to anybody."

Still, the community made clear its anger and disapproval. More than 600 people turned out for a candlelight vigil and 1,000 mourners attended Robert McCartney's funeral.

"People always trusted the republican movement to be seen to be fair, but not now," said Willie Ward, a shopkeeper and community leader. "Everyone believes they're looking after their own interest first before that of the community. People no longer believe in them or trust them."

If republicans were involved in the killing, said Joe O'Donnell, the Sinn Fein city councilor for the area, they were acting as individuals, not as members of the movement, and they should turn themselves in.

The republican movement's ideology "certainly doesn't include people killing people in bars," he said.

At Geraldine's Shop, around the corner from O'Donnell's office, a flier headlined "MURDER" with McCartney's photo is taped to the plate-glass window. It asks potential witnesses to come forward and contact the police. But the bottom of the flier, which included the insignia of the police service and its phone numbers, has been neatly snipped off.

"Some people had a problem with that," O'Donnell said. "This seemed like the best way to handle it."

Hugh Orde, Northern Ireland's chief police constable, said at a news conference last week that his officers were vigorously pursuing the case. "What we've got to do is break the circle of fear" and persuade witnesses to come forward, Orde said. "It is a symbolic case for Northern Ireland."

Special correspondent Mary Fitzgerald contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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