Former hunger striker 'may stand for election'

A former IRA hunger striker who was questioned in April about the theft of sensitive security documents from a top security police station could be a Sinn Fein candidate in the next Assembly election, it emerged today.

Sinn Fein confirmed that Raymond McCartney, who took part in the 1980 republican hunger strike in the Maze Prison and was questioned about a break-in at Castlereagh police station earlier this year, is being lined up as a possible Sinn Fein candidate in Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Mark Durkan’s Foyle constituency.

While his candidacy has yet to be ratified by the party’s ruling council, a Sinn Fein spokesman in Derry said Mr McCartney could form a three-way ticket also featuring the party’s two Foyle Assembly members, Mitchel McLaughlin and Mary Nelis.

As the rival nationalist SDLP meets today to select its three candidates in Foyle, Mr McCartney’s candidacy would be seen as a move by Sinn Fein to capture one of its rival’s three seats and capitalise on the departure from the Assembly of Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume.

If Mr McCartney were to win at the expense of the SDLP, it would also embarrass party leader Mark Durkan, who is defending his Foyle seat along with John Tierney and Annie Courtney.

Raymond McCartney is one of best known republican faces in Derry and a close friend of Sinn Fein Education Minister Martin McGuinness, who was jailed for murdering English-born businessman Jeffrey Agate in the city in February 1977.

A former IRA leader in the Maze Prison, he was one of seven H-Block prisoners who refused food in October 1980 demanding political status for political prisoners following the dirty protests.

He provided one of the most enduring television images of the 1980 hunger strikes, propped up in a hospital bed in the Maze Prison with his gaunt frame, wide eyes and flowing black hair and beard, insisting he and his comrades were prepared to starve to death.

The hunger strike ended in confusion in December 1981, with one IRA prisoner Sean McKenna close to death and the prisoners believing a deal had been struck with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Government and the prison authorities.

It resumed in March 1981, with Bobby Sands refusing food. He and nine other republican prisoners starved to death until it ended in October of this year.

Earlier this year, Raymond McCartney hit the headlines after his house was searched and he and his brother were questioned in the wake of the top security Castlereagh Police Station break-in in March.

Originally, the theft of sensitive security documents was blamed on rogue elements in the security forces.

But a series of police and Army raids on republican homes in Belfast and Derry shifted suspicion onto the Provisional IRA and unsettled many pro-Good Friday Agreement unionists.

Allegations of IRA involvement in the break-in are one of the reasons being cited for next month’s meeting of the 860-member Ulster Unionist Council to consider if David Trimble should remain in government with Sinn Fein.

The IRA and Sinn Fein have vigorously denied that republicans broke into Castlereagh, accusing the security forces of raiding republican homes to create a red herring.