PETER ROBINSON and Martin McGuinness have pledged to “stand up” to the those responsible for murdering Derry man Ciaran Doherty, whose body was found stripped and bound outside the city on Wednesday.
The 31-year-old was engaged to be married and was the father of a young child. He was shot in the head and his body dumped along Braehead Road. His killing is believed to have been carried out by a dissident republican organisation, possibly the Real IRA.
Amid growing alarm at the upsurge in dissident republican violence, the First Minister and Deputy First Minister used a joint press conference at Stormont to voice their opposition to violence.
Mr McGuinness said: “In the face of such an attack, we must unite as a society and in our outright condemnation. We will not be deflected from the work we are engaged in.”
Referring to the belief throughout Derry that the murder was carried out by the Real IRA, Mr McGuinness called on the 32-County Sovereignty Movement to make clear why Mr Doherty was shot dead. “I am calling on the 32-County Sovereignty Movement to give us an explanation. Give the people of Derry an explanation why another young Derryman has been murdered.”
Mr Robinson also extended his condolences to the Doherty family. Sitting alongside Mr McGuinness, he said: “We are going to stand up to the people that carry out these kind of activities. They offer fear, we offer hope, and that is the agenda that this Executive has.”
Det Chief Insp Ian Harrison confirmed yesterday that the murder victim had suffered “a brutal death”.
“He sustained serious injuries. It was unjustified, it was unwarranted. These people destroyed this family’s life,” he said.
“It is time now to stand up to these people,” he added. “What they are is criminals, they are unrepresentative of this town, and we need to get them off the streets.”
Last November, Ciaran Doherty told the Derry Journal that MI5 had attempted to recruit him as an informer, and that together with the British revenue and customs they had blocked his attempts to set up a cigarette manufacturing company called Northern Lites Ltd.
Mr Doherty, who was a former republican prisoner with convictions on both sides of the Border, told the newspaper: “I think the whole thing is a set-up in order to try and recruit informers.”
Last month Mr Doherty again contacted the newspaper after his home was searched by the PSNI after the discovery of €500,000 worth of cannabis in a house in Carrigans, Co Donegal, about 10 miles from his home in Derry.
He told the newspaper that he had no involvement in the drugs find, and that the house belonged to a republican prisoner whom he had met in Portlaoise Prison.
Det Chief Insp Harrison said Mr Doherty’s background was “immaterial, our main focus is on a murder investigation”. He said the PSNI was liaising with Donegal gardaí, and appealed for community help in solving the murder.
SDLP Foyle MP Mark Durkan said: “This seems to bear the hallmarks of the old classic Provo-style ‘execution’. Such killings were always wrong. In the past they held us back, and those who are doing it now are trying to drag us back. Sadly there are still people who believe they have the right to kill and carry out so-called executions in the name of the people of Ireland,” he added.
Sinn Féin Assembly member Martina Anderson said: “It was horrifying and shocking to see the sight of a man’s naked body with his hands tied behind his back and to see his blood running down the road surface.”