McCartneys consider civil action

THE family of Robert McCartney yesterday indicated they could launch an appeal to raise funds for a civil action against his killers.

Mr McCartney's sister Catherine said the family was still hopeful that his killers will face criminal charges. But she acknowledged that the unwillingness of witnesses to speak about what they know has forced the family to consider the civil option.

Mr McCartney, a 30-year-old father of two, was stabbed and beaten outside a Belfast city centre bar on January 30. His friend Brendan Devine was also seriously wounded following a row with republicans. The murder has placed the republican movement under intense pressure.

Ms McCartney told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We are still campaigning very hard to get the murderers brought to justice, but so far none of the witnesses has come forward and spoken to the (Police) Ombudsman directly.

"Nuala O'Loan has said that she has received no direct statements.

She added that statements passed to Ms O'Loan through lawyers were "saying that people were either in the toilets, didn't see anything or were on their mobile phones".

"We believe that a lot of people, particularly in the bar, saw what happened in the bar that night and would have seen a senior republican sanction the murder."

She said the family was thinking of launching a civil suit if criminal proceedings failed due to a lack of evidence from witnesses.

On financing such an action, she said: "We would have to launch an appeal, we certainly don't have that money. Hopefully when we do speak to people in that field, we will have an idea of what really we are in for in that respect.

"I don't think that anybody in Ireland thinks that these people should be able to walk away from what they did just because 70 people won't come forward for various reasons."

Last night it also emerged, a website was under construction to possibly fund the civil case.

Called http www.justiceforrobert.org, the site yesterday was incomplete.

The new website added: "This domain name has been reserved for the family of Robert McCartney."

Paula McCartney last night confirmed the family had commissioned a website for their campaign.

A petition will be set up to support the campaign.