NYT: A Killing in Belfast Is Turning Backers Against a Defiant I.R.A.

[DeepModem Mom]

A Killing in Belfast Is Turning Backers Against a Defiant I.R.A.
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Published: March 7, 2005


LONDON, March 6 - In the Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast, the Irish Republican Army has long served as judge, jury and, in some cases, executioner, meting out its own brand of vigilante justice. Catholics who defy the I.R.A.'s dictates end up with broken kneecaps. Those who betray the I.R.A. wind up dead.

But now five sisters are turning that tradition upside down, spurred by the extraordinarily brutal killing on Jan. 30 of their brother, Robert McCartney, and what is widely seen as a subsequent I.R.A. cover-up....

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The sisters' boldness has galvanized the community. For perhaps the first time, the I.R.A. is facing broad and vocal dissent among its own supporters.

The killing and the sisters' response are creating a crisis for Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political party, as well as for the I.R.A.'s rank and file and its leadership, coming as it does just weeks after the group was weakened by accusations that it was behind a Belfast bank robbery that netted $50 million.

The events have added to a disillusionment with the I.R.A. that has slowly built since the 1998 peace accords. Its members, once considered heroes in Catholic neighborhoods for their role in the struggle against British rule, are increasingly seen as turning to Mafia-like crime and common thuggery and preying on the very community that formed the group's core of support. The I.R.A., long nicknamed Ra, is now sometimes called the Rafia....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/international/europe/07ireland.html