 A Sinn Fein leader publicly criticized the family of a Catholic man killed by IRA members, warning Monday that their relentless campaign for an arrest in his death could diminish donations for his terrorist buddies support for their cause.
| Better shut up, or the boyos might beat them to death... |
The comments from Sinn Fein's deputy leader, Martin McGuinness, came as the party admitted that another of its candidates was in the pub where Irish Republican Army members launched the fatal assault on Robert McCartney. A campaign by McCartney's five sisters to have his killers brought to justice has focused attention on the outlawed IRA's continued grip on hard-line Catholic parts of Belfast, where telling police about IRA activities can mean a death sentence. Catherine McCartney, one of the sisters, on Monday accused Sinn Fein of continually trying to conceal and downplay its members' role in the attack. "I find it hard to believe that we've been campaigning for six weeks and still not a single person has been charged with Robert's murder," she said in an interview in her sister Paula's home in Short Strand, an IRA power base that is home to several of the IRA figures who allegedly attacked their brother.
| Though the party has offered to shoot the guys... |
But McGuinness, an alleged IRA commander, said in what were Sinn Fein's first publicly critical comments of the family: "The McCartneys need to be very careful. To step over that line, which is a very important line, into the world of party-political politics can do a huge disservice to their campaign."
He said if they continued to make direct challenges to Sinn Fein, which is the largest Catholic-backed party in Northern Ireland, they would sleep wit da fishes "dismay and disillusion an awful lot of people, tens of thousands of people who support them in their just demands."
| "So youse better button yer lip!" |
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