REPUBLICAN SINN FEIN:THE PRESIDENT of Republican Sinn Féin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, was last night unavailable for comment on the murder of Constable Stephen Paul Carroll.
However, the comments made by Mr Ó Brádaigh in reference to Saturday’s murder of two British soldiers in Antrim also apply to the killing of the PSNI officer, said vice-president Des Dalton.
While recognising that “everyone regretted loss of life”, Mr Ó Brádaigh said on Sunday that “the hard realities of the situation in Ireland must be faced”.
He said: “As long as the British government and British occupation troops remain in Ireland, there will be Irish people to oppose their presence here.”
Republican Sinn Féin is thought by the PSNI and the Garda to be the political wing of the Continuity IRA, the splinter group responsible for Constable Carroll’s murder. A spokesman for the party criticised Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness for their “brazen political hypocrisy” in urging republicans and nationalists to help the police with their investigations into the killings.
Joe Lynch from Ballinacurra Weston, in Limerick, the Republican Sinn Féin chairman in the southside of the city, said: “The fact is the republican movement they joined is still intact despite their best efforts at destroying it by selling out and surrendering to the British and accepting partition and British occupation.
“Adams and McGuinness have the gall to parade to the graves of men and women who died in the cause of Irish freedom while acting as agents of the British crown against true republican people.
“Not only should they stay from republican graves in future, they should also cease using the name Sinn Féin because they have disgraced it.”