Children plead for father

FIVE children yesterday demanded that Northern Ireland Education Minister Martin McGuinness intervene to have IRA death threats against their father lifted.

Accompanied by their mother and grandmother, the McCloskey children picketed the Sinn Féin minister’s headquarters in a campaign to allow their father Joseph to return to his native Londonderry.

He fled the city 18 months ago after armed and masked men tried to break into his home following a bar-room brawl in which he was involved with a well-known local republican.