A Belfast mother has confronted the man she believes ordered the murder of her son.
Mrs Maureen Kearney, whose son Andrew bled to death after a suspected IRA shooting in north Belfast last July, challenged the man in public last Saturday.
In interviews with journalists yesterday Mrs Kearney said her son was killed because he had got into fights with the man she confronted, who she said was the officer in charge of the IRA Belfast brigade.
She said she challenged the man on a west Belfast street on Saturday. She shoved a memorial card to her son into the man's hand, and accused him of ordering the shooting, saying, "This is my son. He is dead and it's because of you."
In interviews with the News Letter and UTV Mrs Kearney said people on the street applauded her as she told him: "You ran to the IRA and made up lies about him because he once stood up to you and your kind. And because of you they killed him. Because of you he bled to death.
"I hold you as responsible as the 12 men who burst into his flat and shot him. You might not have pulled the trigger but if there were 12 nails in his coffin you put 11 of them there."
Mr Kearney (33), a father of four children, one of them only two weeks old at the time, bled to death after he was attacked at his New Lodge flat by an IRA gang last July. No one has been charged with his killing.
Mrs Kearney said the IRA admitted to her that it carried out the shooting.
