SDLP select election candidates

Northern Ireland’s moderate nationalist SDLP tonight selected four candidates to contest the Foyle constituency in the assembly election – just hours after it emerged a former IRA hunger striker could stand as a Sinn Fein candidate in the constituency.

Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Mark Durkan and assembly members John Tierney and Annie Courtney will be joined on the SDLP ticket in the next Stormont election by former Mayor of Derry Pat Ramsey.

Around 276 delegates chose the four candidates from a field of seven at a meeting in Derry.

The candidates were chosen after it emerged Sinn Fein was considering running prominent Republican Raymond McCartney as a candidate in the election.

Mr McCartney, who took part in the 1980 Republican hunger strike in the Maze Prison, was questioned in April about the theft of sensitive security documents from the top security Castlereagh police station earlier this year.

Sinn Fein strategists believe Mr McCartney, who is a close friend of Stormont Education Minister Martin McGuinness and was jailed for murdering English-born businessman Jeffrey Agate in Derry in February 1977, could take one of the SDLP’s three seats.