http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/IRA-offer-to-shoot-killers-rejected-by-relatives/2005/03/09/1110316095842.html
IRA offer to shoot killers rejected by relatives By James Button in Belfast and agencies March 10, 2005 Murdered forklift truck driver Robert McCartney in an undated photograph. Photo: Reuters The Irish Republican Army has announced that it offered to shoot two of its own men as punishment for the brutal murder of a young Catholic man from Belfast in January. The extraordinary proposal suggests that the organisation is in turmoil following public revulsion against the murder of Robert McCartney, and a campaign for justice by Mr McCartney's sisters and fiancee. But the sisters - Paula, Donna, Gemma, Catherine and Claire - and fiancee, Bridgeen Hagans, rejected the IRA offer, saying they did not want "physical action" but to have the killers tried and convicted in court. The Northern Ireland Secretary in the British Government, Paul Murphy, described the offer as "absolute nonsense". "There is no place for the sort of arbitrary justice and murder that is being suggested here," Mr Murphy said. Mr McCartney's killing in a Belfast pub has provoked an outcry. On Monday, the McCartney sisters accepted an offer from the US President, George Bush, to attend a St Patrick's Day function in the White House next week. Gerry Adams, the president of the IRA's political arm, Sinn Fein, also condemned the attack and gave the names of seven Sinn Fein and three IRA men said to have been in the pub to the police ombudsman, who has passed them to the police. AdvertisementAdvertisement "It wasn't an IRA attack, it wasn't a republican plan," Mr Adams told The Independent. "It was machoism, it was brutal, it was stupidity fuelled by alcohol." But the public uproar has forced the Irish republican leader onto the defensive, after the McCartney sisters deplored his initial description of the attack as "murder or manslaughter". The IRA said in a statement on Tuesday it had had two meetings with the McCartney family in the presence of an independent observer. In the first meeting last month, an IRA representative had "stated in clear terms that the IRA was prepared to shoot people directly involved in the killing of Robert McCartney". But the statement added: "The family made it clear that they did not want physical action taken against those involved. They stated that they wanted those individuals to give full account of their actions in court." The IRA stopped short of declaring whether its offer to shoot those involved meant they were to be killed, or punished with a kneecapping or "six pack", where victims are shot in the ankles, knees and elbows. The IRA has already expelled three volunteers and Sinn Fein has suspended seven members over the murder. Although detectives have the names, the 10 men interviewed refused to answer questions. 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," Mr Ahern said in Dublin. He 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," Mr Blair told the House of Commons in London. He said the IRA had revealed why both governments and every other political party in both parts of Ireland were demanding the IRA's full disarmament and disbandment. "We have made considerable progress in Northern Ireland," he said, referring to the decade-old 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." Mr McCartney, a 33-year-old father of two, was killed by at least four men after he and his friend, Brendan Devine, got into an altercation. Following a command from the senior IRA figure among the men, one slit Mr Devine's throat. Mr Devine survived the attack but Mr McCartney was set upon by the men wielding knives, iron bars and sewer rods and bled to death on the street. The assailants then returned to the pub, locked the doors, destroyed a security camera and told the 70 drinkers that anyone who spoke about the killing would be punished. A veteran Northern Ireland civil rights campaigner, Eammon McCann, told the Herald that the IRA offer "to publicly execute their own men is without precedent". Mr Adams's decision to provide names to the police was also astonishing. "A whole culture is being overturned," he said. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Give underprivileged students the materials they need to learn. 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