Sinn Fein ducks question of why it doesn't think Provo killer Pearse McAuley is a real republican - and why he doesn't deserve a tricolour on his coffin

Pearse McAuley’s funeral was held in Strabane last week, replete with IRA trappings and the Irish national flag.

But Sinn Fein figures have objected to the use of the flag, with Pearse Doherty saying McAuley was not regarded as a real republican.

McAuley, among other things, was behind the murder of a garda officer in 1996 and in 2014 he stabbed his wife.

Sinn Fein has been asked whether it is the garda shooting or the stabbing of his wife, or both, which disqualify him from being republican, but it has yet to answer.

• ‘HE IS NOT A REPUBLICAN’:

Father of five Jerry McCabe was shot dead with an AK47 by a team of robbers, who also shot his police colleague multiple times (though he survived).

The robbery came just a few months after the IRA had ended its ceasefire, which had been in force since 1994.

McAuley had previously escaped from jail where he had been serving time for an IRA murder plot.

Caught and jailed for the McCabe murder, when he was released from his sentence in 2009 he went on to stab his wife – a Sinn Fein councillor – during Christmas 2014.

He was jailed again, but was freed in 2022, and then died 10 days ago at home in Strabane.

In widely-reported comments this week, Pearse Doherty – a Donegal TD and Sinn Fein’s finance spokesman – said McAuley had nothing to do with Sinn Fein for “many, many, many years”.“And in the eyes of republicans, he’s not a republican,” Mr Doherty added.

“The reference was made in relation to what happened to my colleague and how he treated my colleague in relation to the killing of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe.

“The party has been very clear that we have condemned that on numerous occasions.

“In relation to the funeral of Pearse McAuley we had no hand, act or part in it.

“In relation to the placement of a tricolour, if it was our decision, one would not be on the coffin.”

Later, Sinn Fein First Minister Michelle O’Neill was quoted as saying: "Sinn Fein had no part in that [funeral] and don't believe that a tricolour should have been placed on his coffin.”

• OTHER KILLERS SF HAS HONOURED WITH FLAG:

The News Letter asked the party to explain why McAuley is not to be regarded as a republican: is it because he killed a garda, or because he stabbed his wife, or both?

And if it is because he killed a guard, were all such killings of gardai wrong in the party's eyes?

These enquiries met with no response from the press office.

Looking just at former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams alone, among the many tricolour-draped coffins he has walked behind or carried include those of Brendan Hughes, the architect of Bloody Friday, in which nine people were killed including two women and two boys aged 15 and 14.

Mr Adams carried his coffin in 2008.

He also infamously carried the tricolour-draped coffin of Thomas 'Bootsy' Begley, who killed himself in the botched Shankill bombing of 1993 as well as nine other people, including four women and two girls aged seven and 13.

He also carried the tricolour-clad coffin of Martin Meehan in 2007. Meehan once helped in the kidnap and torture of a 17-year-old youth, suspected of being an informer.

Meehan was also involved in the abduction of a TA soldier (who was rescued before he could be killed), and was believed to have had a hand in the point-blank shooting of three off-duty Scottish soldiers in the Belfast hills in 1971, but was not charged over the latter.

During the Troubles, the IRA alone murdered at least six members of An Garda Siochana (and an Irish soldier too), according to the book Lost Lives.

In 2022, Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald made the following comment: "I've been clear, and we have been clear, that no members of the gardai, nobody wearing the uniform of An Garda Siochana, should’ve been hurt or harmed in any way in the course of that conflict."