The sisters of a Belfast man stabbed to death by an IRA gang in a pub more than 10 years ago believe last week’s murder of a senior IRA commander has robbed them of the chance to get justice for their brother.
Paula and Catherine McCartney maintain that Gerard “Jock” Davison was the man who gave the order for their brother Robert to be killed after a row inside Magennis’s Bar in January 2005.
McCartney was beaten and stabbed to death after arguing with Davison inside the bar near the Market district of the city. Outside a number of IRA members kicked, punched and stabbed the 33-year-old forklift truck driver to death.
Police who searched the pub for clues that night found that the interior had been thoroughly cleaned, so no DNA clues could be found that might lead to McCartney’s killers. A kitchen knife that was believed to be the murder weapon was never found.
The IRA leadership later offered to shoot those responsible from its Market, Short Strand and Lower Ormeau units, while Sinn Féin came under international pressure to denounce the killers and hand them over to the police. However, no one has ever been convicted of McCartney’s murder.
Davison was gunned down on Tuesday not far from his home in the Market area. The 47-year-old was at one time a senior IRA commander in Belfast and is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of 15 people, the majority of whom were petty criminals from the nationalist community.
The McCartney family’s struggle to bring Robert’s killers to justice went all the way to the White House when former US president George W Bush gave them his public support.
Speaking on RTÉ radio on Sunday, Paula McCartney said she did not believe in murder and had been robbed of the chance to face Davison in a court of law.
“I did get emotional when I heard [Davison] was dead to the point where I cried, but I wasn’t crying for him. I was crying for Robert. For me the reality is he isn’t coming back.”
She said Davison’s death marked the end of their decade-long battle for justice.
“The campaign for a lot of the time was a crutch and kept Robert, for me anyway, alive to a certain extent.”
She added: “It would be hypocritical of me to say I felt any sympathy for Jock Davison.”
Several thousand republicans and key Sinn Féin politicians, including Gerry Kelly, attended Davison’s funeral in the Market area on Saturday.
Mystery surrounds the killing of Davison, who was one of the most prominent IRA gunmen in Belfast from the 1990s onwards. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has ruled out the involvement of Ulster loyalists and rival republican dissidents in the murder.
A 38-year-old man was arrested by PSNI on Friday in connection with the murder, on the same day a 27-year-old man was released from custody.
