EU 'should fund McCartney family's fight for justice'

Euro-MPs launched bitter attacks on Sinn Féin and the IRA tonight over the murder of Robert McCartney.

They said his family deserved justice and demanded that the European Union fund a civil action to bring his killers to justice.

It was also claimed that the current criminal police inquiry is thwarted by lack of cooperation.

The cross-party condemnation came in a debate in Strasbourg triggered by Mr McCartney’s sisters’ plea for help in breaking down walls of silence.

Three McCartney sisters – Gemma, Paula and Catherine – were in the public gallery of the Strasbourg chamber to hear overwhelming support for their campaign – and strident demands for Sinn Fein and the “self-styled Irish Republican Army” to cooperate.

The leader of Ireland’s Fine Gael MEPs Avril Doyle, one of the key proposers of a joint motion urging the use of EU funds to back a civil legal action in Northern Ireland if necessary, said the McCartney family had conducted a “courageous, dignified and determined pursuit of justice”.

She went on: “Robert McCartney’s vicious beating and stabbing to death was ordered by a commander in the Belfast brigade of the provisional IRA following a minor dispute between the commander’s uncle and the group with which Mr McCartney was socialising.

“Robert McCartney was in the wrong place at the wrong time but this was no minor barroom brawl as some have disgracefully attempted to portray it. His brutal beating and stabbing was a serious and savage attack, which bore all the hallmarks of a politically motivated IRA murder.”

Ms Doyle claimed the killing was “perpetrated by up to 12 killers, a significant number of whom are known members of the provisional IRA".

She added: “It was ruthlessly supervised and forensically covered up by men announcing that their activities were IRA business, men who proceeded to intimidate the 70 witnesses to the crime and their families, first forbidding them from calling an ambulance, as Robert McCartney bled to death before their eyes, then warning them not to cooperate with the authorities.”

The level of fear and intimidation of the witnesses had been such that the “code of silence” surrounding the event had still not been broken, nearly four months after Mr McCartney’s death, said Ms Doyle.

The IRA’s “barbaric” offer to shoot dead the perpetrators had been met with incredulity in the civilised world, she said.

“To even suggest that amends might be made through such summary justice indicates that few lessons, if any, have been learnt by the IRA over the past 30 years.”.

The rule of law advocated by Sinn Féin and enforced by the IRA was a “brutal regime of terror, intimidation and violence” incompatible with democratic society. It was an affront to justice and left victims, such as the McCartney family, powerless and without redress.

But Ms Doyle said the “McCartney women” had refused to be intimidated and had done more to highlight “residual thuggery and criminality” existing in Northern Ireland since the official IRA ceasefire than achieved in a decade by the London and Dublin governments and the political establishment in Northern Ireland.

Bringing Mr McCartney’s killers to justice would be a total rejection of “wanton killing, maiming and violence” and a call for real peace.

She added: “I hope we will be in a position to help Robert’s family if the necessity arises, if none of the witnesses, or indeed IRA or Sinn Fein, is brave or honourable enough to supply the Police Service of Northern Ireland with the information necessary to institute criminal proceedings.”

Democratic Unionist Party MEP Jim Allister saluted the “remarkable bravery” of the McCartney sisters in the wake of a “foul murder” carried out on the order by hand signal from an IRA commander that a knife should be used to kill.

An IRA unit then disposed of the knife and conducted a clean-up. Then, he said the intimidation brigade stepped in.

The “cut-throat psychopath” behind the killing remained “publicly proclaimed”, and the one who ordered the killing still “struts the streets of Belfast”, he said.

He named three men he called on to tell what they knew of the “horrific events in the alleyway”.

“Sinn Féin-IRA could secure justice, but their priority is to protect their own.”

Ulster Unionist Euro-MP James Nicholson said the level of European support for the McCartney sisters and Mr McCartney’s fiancee, Bridgeen Karen Hagans, reflected abhorrence of terrorism and frustration with Sinn Féin:

“These brave women have shown that they won’t be intimidated, despite the brutal manner of Robert McCartney’s murder and the conspiracy of silence that surrounds it.

“Sinn Féin and the IRA have been seriously embarrassed by the public outcry this killing has caused. The European Parliament is showing its solidarity for the McCartney sisters, its contempt for the murderers and thugs in the IRA, and its anger at Sinn Fein’s refusal to act decisively against those responsible.”

The motion on the table, backed by more than 600 MEPs – although not the two Sinn Féin members – condemned “violence and criminality by the self-styled ’Irish Republican Army’ (IRA) in Northern Ireland, in particular the murder of Robert McCartney“.

It urged the Sinn Féin leadership “to insist that those responsible for the murder and witnesses to the murder cooperate directly with the Police Service of Northern Ireland and be free from the threat of reprisals from the IRA“.

And it proposed that “if the Police Service of Northern Ireland is unable to bring a prosecution in relation to the murder of Robert McCartney, the European Union grant a financial contribution toward the cost of legal fees incurred by the McCartney family in their quest for justice, by way of civil proceedings“.

If endorsed in a vote of MEPs tomorrow, the proposal will then be considered by the European Commission – which has already promised to help – and EU government ministers.

Any cash support would come from the EU’s fund to help victims of terrorism - never before used to finance an individual legal case as proposed.

The idea was first raised when three McCartney sisters visited Brussels last month to press their case for support.