![]() As the top-ranking IRA figure in the Markets, he wielded an authority that included the right to shoot criminal opponents in the limbs and to use intimidation to shield the IRA's own members from arrest - including by killing any local identified as a police informer.ĭavison in 2005 allegedly ordered IRA comrades to attack a Catholic civilian, Robert McCartney, at a pub near the Markets following an exchange of insults. It's a rich irony, given that IRA veterans like Davison long enforced the opposite policy, particularly when it concerned their own members' crimes. Sinn Fein voted in 2007 to start co-operating with British law and order, a stunning U-turn reflected in the party's appeals Tuesday for Markets residents to tell detectives what they knew about the killing. British troops have been off the streets for nearly a decade, Protestant militants who used to kill Catholic civilians at random in retaliation for IRA attacks have stuck to truces, and the once Protestant-dominated police force has become increasingly Catholic in membership. Negotiators delivered a 1998 peace accord that forged a Catholic-Protestant government with the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party at its heart. The relative rarity of Tuesday's killing underlined how much has changed in Northern Ireland from the bloodiest years of its four-decade conflict that left more than 3,600 dead in a British territory of 1.8 million. "This was a cold-blooded murder carried out in broad daylight in a residential area and it has no place in the new Northern Ireland," Galloway said. ![]() He also dismissed involvement by extremists from Northern Ireland's British Protestant majority, meaning that his killers more likely had a criminal or personal motive. Chief Inspector Justyn Galloway, said he doubted that an IRA splinter group was responsible. Small IRA factions who reject their side's 1997 cease-fire and subsequent efforts to govern Northern Ireland in a spirit of compromise have planted several bombs in the past two weeks, none of which caused significant damage.īut the policeman leading the Davison murder investigation, Det. Officers ordered an immediate increase in visible street patrolling, including road checkpoints, to deter what they called a rise in attacks by IRA die-hards in the run-up to Thursday's United Kingdom general election involving Northern Ireland, which has 18 seats in the House of Commons in London. It was the first fatal shooting in Northern Ireland in more than a year. No group claimed responsibility for killing Gerard "Jock" Davison, 47, in Belfast's Markets neighbourhood. DUBLIN - A former Irish Republican Army commander linked to one of the outlawed group's most notorious killings was shot dead at close range Tuesday morning on a street near his home in Belfast, residents and police said.
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