Statement by TUV South Belfast Assembly candidate Andrew Girvin:
“Seventeen years ago tonight Robert McCartney, a young father of two who was engaged to be married was murdered after an altercation in Magennis’ Bar. In the aftermath of the beating and stabbing a riot was organised to delay police while a comprehensive clean-up operation by the IRA swung into gear with clothes burned and CCTV tapes removed.
“None of the seventy odd people in the bar that night, many of whom had returned from a Bloody Sunday commemoration in Londonderry, came forward with information to the PSNI and then Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams refusing to advise people to go to the police about the murder for a full two years.
“Shamefully, in spite of a determined campaign by his courageous sisters – a campaign which resulted in them being intimidated from the Short Strand where they had lived for generations – justice has never been seen in the McCartney case with one of the republicans present in the bar that night, Deirdre Hargey, now serving in the Executive.
“While it may not have received the headlines which other anniversaries, have the murder of Robert McCartney continues to tell us a lot about the state of politics in Northern Ireland.”