A 38-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the murder of a senior IRA member in Belfast.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland confirmed the latest arrest in relation to the killing of Gerard “Jock” Davison at the same time as announcing that they had released a 27-year-old man.
There is now a heavy police presence in the Markets area of central Belfast where Davison was shot dead around 9am on Tuesday.
The murdered man, who was in his late 40s, was a senior member of the Provisional IRA in the city and later a supporter of Sinn Féin’s peace strategy.
Lately Davison was also a community worker for the Markets Development Association. A neighbouring community association in the Protestant Donegall Pass area issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon condemning the killing and offering their deepest sympathy to his family.
Davison rose through the PIRA’s ranks in the 1980s and later became its commanding officer in Belfast as well sitting on the organisation’s general headquarters staff. He was first jailed for paramilitary activities in the 80s and spent time in a young offenders centre for an IRA rocket attack on a police patrol in the Market district.
Although a number of his former colleagues in the same PIRA unit later joined dissident republican organisations, Davison remained loyal to the Sinn Féin leadership and supported the party’s peace strategy.
Davison came from a family closely aligned with the republican movement during the Troubles. His uncle and convicted IRA man Brendan “Ruby” Davison was shot dead by the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force in 1988 very close to the scene of Tuesday’s murder.
In 2005 Davison was questioned about the murder of 33-year-old Robert McCartney outside Magennis’s Bar in Belfast city centre but was later released without charge.
No one has been convicted for the murder of McCartney, a father of two from the nearby Short Strand area, who was beaten and stabbed to death by local IRA members.
Earlier on Thursday the sisters of Robert McCartney said Davison’s murder had robbed them of a chance to get justice for their brother. Catherine and Paula McCartney said Davison had given the order for their brother to be killed and they had wanted to see him in court in connection with the 2005 murder.
