Sinn Fein is under political pressure to provide more assistance to the PSNI in its investigation of the murder of Robert McCartney, after the acquittal of three people last week.

The PSNI has indicated it will continue its inquiries into the murder outside a Belfast bar in January 2005, while the judge in last week’s case said that if new evidence emerged no one, even those who had been acquitted, “will be beyond the reach of potential prosecution”.

Terence Davison, 51, was cleared of murder and two other men cleared of charges related to the killing.

Judge John Gillen expressed unease that the two most important prosecution witnesses had been interviewed repeatedly by the IRA. That one Ed Gowdy, had been visited between four and six times by the IRA was further cause “for the gathering momentum of doubt that I felt about his evidence”.

There was a possibility that Gowdy’s evidence and identification “may have been influenced or even directed by the IRA. At the very least there must be a real possibility that his evidence has been through a sieve orchestrated by this unlawful organisation,” the judge said.

He said the IRA may also have influenced the evidence of Brendan Devine, McCartney’s friend, who was badly beaten and had his throat cut by the republican gang. Afterwards the IRA met Devine several times to discuss the events of January 30.

In March 2005, the IRA announced that it had solved the case — having established who murdered McCartney, who struck Gowdy with a steel bar, and who supplied and then retrieved a knife from the murder scene. The Provisionals said everyone involved had made “voluntary admissions”, and accepted that there had been a cover-up with a CCTV tape being removed from Magennis’s bar and destroyed after staff were threatened. Clothes worn by the attackers had also been burnt afterwards, the IRA said.

The Provisionals had given the names of everyone involved to the McCartney family, and announced that they were prepared to shoot those directly involved in the killing.

The IRA said it wanted individuals to give a full account of their actions in court.

McCartney’s sisters again accused Sinn Fein and the IRA of hindering efforts to bring the killers to justice, saying: “From day one have obstructed the course of justice and continue to do so.”

Catherine McCartney said the police had “a wealth of information, a wealth of intelligence but can turn none of it into evidence because people refuse to come forward and stand in a court”.

Jeffrey Donaldson, a DUP MP and the party’s justice spokesman, said yesterday: “It is important that if the IRA has information that could help bring to justice those who were responsible for this terrible murder, then it should do so and the sooner the better.

“We have always maintained that the devolution of policing and justice can only take place in a climate where there is community confidence and that confidence can only be undermined if republicans fall short in terms of co-operation with the police on matters of such a serious nature.”

Jim Allister, the Traditional Unionist MEP, said: “If Sinn Fein was genuine in supporting the rule of law, then the witnesses necessary to secure justice would have been permitted to come forward.”

Detective Superintendent Kevin Dunwoody said witnesses who would have helped to bring the killers to justice had held on to what they knew. “They need to look to their own consciences today,” he said. “Perhaps \ will jolt the consciences of some of those witnesses and perhaps they will now tell us what they know. We will consider our investigative options, and we will do that promptly and professionally.”

Judge Gillen said he was unable to convict on the evidence of the three main prosecution witnesses — Devine, Gowdy and C, an unidentified woman who drove through the scene as McCartney was being killed.

The woman said she saw a white-haired man strike McCartney with several sweeping motions, similar to a stabbing action. but had not seen a knife. Witness C also described the attacker as having different clothes and hairstyle to those Davison was seen with at 11pm in the Royal Victoria hospital.

The judge noted that McCartney had been stabbed only once, not repeatedly, and said it seemed “implausible that the accused could have changed his clothes or had his hair cut between the incident and his attendance at hospital”.

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