February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
A father of two, Robert McCartney, 33, from the Catholic Short Strand district in the east of the city, was found stabbed on Jan. 30. He died the following day of his injuries.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said a large quantity of CCTV pictures are being examined but have refused to comment on claims that a tape was missing from a camera outside the bar where the fight is said to have taken place.
McCartney was allegedly involved in a fight the evening he died. He was found unconscious in a nearby street. Friends and neighbors held a candlelight vigil in solidarity with the grieving family on Friday night.
The murder weapon has not yet been found. The police say nothing should justify such a brutal murder.
“We believe that there is nothing to suggest that this was carried out by any organization in pursuance of its organizational aims or objectives,” a detective said.
Several police officers were injured in disturbances that followed search operations in the city center Markets area in connection with the killing.
Twenty police units operating out of armored vehicles carried out raids that apparently led to them coming under attack from crowds of local teenagers. Some of the rioters appeared to be under 10 years of age.
Sinn Fein’s Alex Maskey condemned the police, describing the scale and approach of the operation as “completely unacceptable and unjustifiable.”
“The searches were carried out in a brutal, heavy-handed way reminiscent of the types of raids carried out years ago by the RUC,” he said.
Maskey also condemned Sammy Wilson of the DUP and others who, he said, had turned the killing a “political point-scoring exercise.” Wilson had said that Sinn Fein were “struggling desperately to minimize the damage to their image” after the murder. Wilson has also said, “IRA/Sinn Fein are once again exposed as being on the side of the criminals who murdered a popular local man, not the kind of image they want in an election year.”
Maskey countered by calling Wilson’s comments “shameful and despicable.”
“Allegations have been made by Reg Empey [Ulster Unionist Party], Alasdair McDonnell and now also Mark Durkan [both SDLP],” Maskey said. “This includes an outrageous claim that republicans are in some way covering up the events and orchestrating the recent trouble in the Markets.
“These allegations are clearly untrue and without foundation. There is no coverup and no orchestration of street violence. That is why none of these individuals have been able to produce one scrap of evidence to back up their claims.”