The McCartney sisters remain resolutely determined to see justice for their murdered brother, Robert, Catherine McCartney said in Belfast last night at the publication of her book about the killing, Walls of Silence.
Author Margaret Ward launched the book, which is published by Gill & Macmillan, in Belfast's Linen Hall Library.
While one man has been charged in connection with the January 2005 murder of Robert McCartney, the McCartney sisters and Robert's partner, Bridgeen, believe that at least a dozen people were involved in his killing outside Magennis's Bar in central Belfast. Walls of Silence chronicles how the family took their "Justice for Robert" campaign to the Republic, Europe, the US and elsewhere, enlisting the support of leading politicians including US president George Bush. It also deals with the hurdles the family encountered since the murder.
The book is fiercely critical of the IRA and Sinn Féin. It contends that, despite words of support from the republican leadership, republicans prevented the killers being arrested, charged and convicted - an allegation Catherine McCartney repeated last night.
"What we want to achieve by this book is the truth," she said. "We want to show what we have been put through and how the politics of this place was used to try to protect his murderers. We want to show how we were subjected to a campaign of isolation by the Provisional movement."
Ms McCartney said a recent incident in the Markets area of Belfast illustrated that "nothing much has changed in three years". She was referring to how her sister Gemma, a community nurse, complained of being forced to leave the area where she and a colleague were conducting cancer screening tests for women in a specially adapted health board bus.
Gemma McCartney said that a man, when he realised she was a McCartney, spat at her feet and ordered her to leave the Markets.
"This is about Sinn Féin control, although they will deny it," Catherine McCartney said.
Sinn Féin denied that the man was linked to the party.
