Magennis witness changed her story?

Angelique Christafis has been taking stock of how the climate in Belfast has changed since the sisters went to Washington to take their case to a wider audience. There is some anger from others who have lost loved ones that they should be getting such attention. But she also talks to a taxi driver who picked up one of the Sinn Fein candidates who’d previously claimed she saw nothing in Magennis’s Bar that night who claims: “She told me Magennis’s had erupted and there were glasses and bottles flying everywhere.”Even so, Sinn Fein continues to prosecute its own campaign against police methodology:

Sinn Féin has now turned the spotlight on the police, saying they are deliberately holding up the investigation in order to damage the party. It said a key suspect made himself available to police for interview this week but was turned away. One witness had named the person who hit him with a steel bar outside Magennis’s.

A second witness had named people involved in the bar brawl, and a third said he could pick out McCartney’s attackers in an identity parade, it said. Mr Adams questioned why charges had not been brought against those named, and why an identity parade had not been arranged.

Mick Fealty

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty