Sisters Say IRA Is Creating ‘Wall of Silence’ in Brother’s Slaying

The sisters of a Catholic man who was killed by members of the Irish Republican Army after a barroom fight say they have received death threats since a highly publicized St. Patrick’s Day visit to the White House.

In an interview, they also accused Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, of preventing witnesses from talking to police.

“Sinn Fein members and IRA people have obviously closed ranks, and that’s how this wall of silence has been created,” said Catherine McCartney, one of the slain man’s five sisters.

After Robert McCartney, a 33-year-old father of two, was stabbed to death outside a Belfast pub Jan. 30, his sisters launched a popular revolt against the IRA in its own backyard. Since returning from last week’s whirlwind tour of Washington, they have continued their campaign against the secretive militant organization.

President Bush invited the sisters to a St. Patrick’s Day reception with civic leaders and activists from Northern Ireland. Afterward, Catherine McCartney said, he assured them he supported their cause.

At Paula McCartney’s home Wednesday, the sisters spoke of their immediate plans to seek justice for their brother: opening an office in downtown Belfast, creating a website and circulating a petition around Ireland.

The sisters also plan to hold a rally next month outside the bar where their brother was killed and to address the European Parliament in Brussels.

The IRA acknowledged that some of its members had killed Robert McCartney but it denied responsibility for the crime in an Easter statement published Wednesday.

“It was wrong, it was murder, it was a crime,” the militia wrote in the republican newspaper An Phoblacht. “But it was not carried out by the IRA, nor was it carried out on behalf of the IRA.”

The group said it tried to “assist in whatever way we can.”

“Unfortunately, it would appear that no matter what we do, it will never be enough for some.”

The IRA did not repeat its offer to the family to shoot the killers, an overture that drew widespread condemnation as an example of gangland justice.

Paula McCartney, 40, a women’s studies student at Queen’s University in Belfast, said she was once a supporter of the IRA and was not out to destroy it.

Speaking in the Catholic enclave of Short Strand, where the modern IRA fought its first gun battle with British loyalists in 1970 and where the McCartney family has lived for a century, the women called on Sinn Fein and the IRA to deliver their brother’s killers to the authorities.

“I don’t believe that [the witnesses] are deciding themselves not to come forward,” Catherine McCartney said.

Alex Maskey, a Sinn Fein city councilor and former mayor of Belfast, denied Wednesday that the party was trying to obstruct the investigation.

He said the party made an unprecedented gesture when it suspended seven members who were in the bar at the time of the killing and gave their names to the police ombudsman. “I don’t consider that closing ranks -- far from it,” Maskey said.

A backlash against the McCartneys has intensified in recent weeks. On radio shows and websites, they have been accused of being politically manipulated or driven to damage Sinn Fein. The family calls it an orchestrated smear campaign.

“Why do they have to be looking for some political motive, rather than just looking at this as an issue of justice?” Catherine McCartney said.

Paula McCartney said that after the U.S. trip she got a letter warning the sisters that they would end up like their brother. An enclosed photo of the family was covered with excrement.

But the McCartneys are remaining defiant. “Fear doesn’t come into it,” Paula said. “The only fear we do have is that these people walk away from this.”

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Times staff writer John Daniszewski in London contributed to this report.