IRA offers to shoot Killer members

[Strengthandhonour]

IRELAND
IRA offers to shoot killer members
Eamon Mallie
Posted Wed, 09 Mar 2005





The Irish Republican Army (IRA) announced on Tuesday that it had offered to shoot members who killed a Catholic man in a pub brawl, an apparent public relations move which backfired badly as opponents said it showed the Northern Irish paramilitary group was lawless and congenitally violent.

The leadership of the IRA said it had told the family of Robert McCartney at a meeting that it was "prepared to shoot the people directly involved in the killing", which they had rejected.

The 33-year-old father of two was beaten and stabbed to death outside a busy Belfast bar on January 30 by a group of people later identified by a series of reports as IRA members.

McCartney's family accused the IRA of intimidating witnesses and began a campaign to bring the killers to justice, which attracted widespread support even in staunchly Roman Catholic areas of Belfast.

It also has deeply embarrassed the IRA's political wing Sinn Fein, which has officially disavowed criminality in a bid to take part in politics and Northern Ireland's lengthy peace process.

In a statement, the ruling army council of the IRA — Northern Ireland's main Catholic paramilitary group — said that four men murdered McCartney, two of whom were IRA members.

McCartney's family had met IRA representatives and were told that not only did the paramilitary group know the identities of all the guilty men, but that after "an internal disciplinary proceeding" it had offered to shoot them.

McCartney's family didn't want physical action taken

However, McCartney's sisters and his partner "made it clear they did not want physical action taken against those involved” said the IRA,

“They stated they wanted those individuals to give a full account of their actions in court", the IRA said.

The statement appears to be an effort by the IRA to restore its reputation, badly hit both by the murder and a massive bank robbery in December in Belfast, blamed on the paramilitary group.

Offer slammed as mark of violent criminal gang

While Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, said the decision not to shoot the men showed the "changed situation" in Northern Ireland, others slammed the offer as the mark of a violent criminal gang.

Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy stressed that any sort of retribution must come via the legal system.

The offer was a "declared intent to murder", said Ian Paisley, veteran leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, Northern Ireland's biggest Protestant Party, and a long-time foe of the IRA.

It showed that "terrorism is the only stock in trade of Sinn Fein/IRA", he said.

Condemnation also came from Dublin, with Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell describing the IRA offer as "bizarre".

"It's astonishing. What are these people thinking? What kind of a world are these people living in? They're clearly in a very strange place," he told reporters. AFP