Northern Ireland: Band of Sisters

The five Northern Irish sisters who landed at Baltimore/Washington International Airport last Tuesday hardly looked like dignitaries, which is why U.S. agents reacted skeptically when the McCartney women revealed the purpose of their visit to the U.S.: they had come to meet George W. Bush. After briefly questioning the women, authorities let them go in time to make their appointments the next two days in Washington--which included a meeting over coffee and shamrock cookies with Senators Edward Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Chris Dodd and a chat with Bush at the annual St. Patrick's Day reception at the White House. Bush listened as the women vowed to find justice for the death of their brother Robert McCartney, murdered earlier this year in Belfast, Northern Ireland, by a gang the family says included members of the Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.). Robert's fiancé Bridgeen Hagans made the trip with the sisters. "Justice will prevail," Bush told them, before repeating one of his favorite post-9/11 lines: "Out of evil can come great good."

Everywhere the women were seen last week--in hotels, taxis, corridors of power--Americans applauded their stand against the I.R.A., whose stature at home and abroad has plummeted in the face of the McCartneys' campaign to have Robert's killers arrested. By breaking the code of silence in Northern Ireland that has long surrounded crimes committed by I.R.A. members, the family has galvanized public opinion against the I.R.A., which for the past 35 years has claimed to be defending the Catholics of Northern Ireland from Protestant gunmen. According to a recent poll, nearly half the supporters of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing, want the group to disband. While the sisters basked in Washington goodwill, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams was snubbed by congressional allies and disinvited from the St. Patrick's Day party at the White House. Says Congressman Peter King, a longtime Sinn Fein supporter who met with the McCartneys: "They have a forum that no one has ever had before. [If] this case is followed all the way, and the guys who did it go to jail for it, that will have monumental impact on the people of Northern Ireland."

The sisters, whose ages range from 27 to 41, live in a hardscrabble Catholic neighborhood of East Belfast. On Jan. 30, Robert, 33, a forklift driver and a father of two, was at a pub in Belfast when he got into an argument. It spilled into the street, where McCartney was stabbed and beaten to death by a gang that allegedly included I.R.A. members. The perpetrators cleaned the scene, removed closed-circuit television footage and intimidated witnesses, the sisters and police say. Some witnesses have come forward but have denied seeing the actual attack, and no one has been charged. "Seventy-two people could not have all been in the toilets," says Paula McCartney, one of Robert's sisters.