Robert McCartney murder: police arrest 53-year-old man
Killing of Belfast father of two in 2005 provoked international campaign with sisters claiming Sinn Féin and IRA involvement
A man has been arrested in connection with the one of the most infamous murders in post-peace-process Northern Ireland – the killing of Belfast father of two Robert McCartney.
A 53-year-old man is being questioned by PSNI detectives over the beating and stabbing of McCartney outside Magennis’s pub in central Belfast seven years ago.
His murder provoked an international campaign by his sisters to bring his killers to justice: they claim those who carried out the killing were members of Sinn Féin and the IRA, and that they used paramilitary muscle to cover up the murder.
The McCartney sisters accused the IRA and Sinn Féin of intimidating witnesses and lying to police about who was responsible. They say the events leading up to McCartney’s murder started following a verbal row between their brother and a leading IRA figure from south Belfast who then ordered his underlings to attack him.
Their campaign brought them to the White House, where they received the support of President George W Bush and veteran Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy.
Under pressure, the IRA expelled three of its members that the sisters accused of being central to the killing, which occurred after republicans from the Market, Lower Ormeau and Short Strand areas of the city had returned from a Bloody Sunday commemoration on 30 January 2005.
No one has ever been found guilty of McCartney’s murder even though up to 40 people were in the bar at the time he was assaulted. In 2008, Terence Davison, 51, was acquitted of McCartney’s murder and two other men were cleared of charges connected to the killing.
