U.S. Envoy Protests Naming Manhattan Corner for Terrorist
The U.S. ambassador to Britain, Henry Catto, has protested to New York Mayor David N. Dinkins against the city’s naming of a street corner after a convicted Irish Republican Army gunman, the embassy said today.
The New York City Council voted last Friday to name the corner in lower Manhattan after Joseph Doherty, who has been in jail for seven years in the United States while resisting efforts to extradite him to Britain.
He was jailed for killing British army Capt. Herbert Westmacott in Northern Ireland in 1980 but escaped and fled to the United States in 1983.
Catto urged the city to change its mind and added: “Mr. Doherty is no hero. The IRA is a gang of murderers which deserves New York City’s condemnation, not its commemoration.”
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