Sinn Féin denies republican link to murder
The killers of Dublin man Joseph Rafferty had nothing do with the republican movement, Sinn Féin said today.
Mr Rafferty, 29, who was originally from the south inner city, was shot outside his home in the Ongar Park Estate, near Clonsilla, on April 12.
His sister, Esther Rafferty, has said he received death threats before his murder and that his family believe he was killed by someone with Sinn Féin and IRA connections.
But today Dublin Sinn Féin chairman Justin Moran said the people Ms Rafferty believed killed her brother had nothing to do with Sinn Féin or the republican movement.
“These people are thugs… they are not members of Sinn Féin, they have never been Sinn Féin election workers,” he said.
“What happened to Joseph Rafferty was a brutal, horrific murder and there have been allegations made that people who are some way connected to our party are involved in this.
“What I’m saying is these people are not members of Sinn Féin, I do not know them as members of Sinn Féin, they have never been involved in the party,” he told RTE Radio.
“I would be astonished if this person is involved with republicans in any way, shape or form,” he said.
Ms Rafferty said her brother had been murdered over a simple row in which he had intervened after his younger sister and nephew had been attacked by a youth.
She said he was threatened with a visit from the “Ra” (IRA), and told he would be “got” in the gym or in Ongar Park.
Ms Rafferty said: “We know that the person who has been identified as murdering Joseph has definitely Sinn Féin/IRA connections – that has been 100% proved to us.”
She said her brother had no connections with the IRA and was not known to the garda before his death.
“It’s still devastating for the whole family to accept that this can actually happen in the year 2005 an innocent man can be gunned down literally over nothing.
“He was 100% an innocent man and he should still be here today and he is not because of someone, because that’s they way they go on,” she told RTE Radio.
She said she had been to see Sinn Féin councillor Daithi Doolan on three occasions before Joseph’s death, but he had told her the people who had threatened her brother were not in the IRA.
