Sinn Fein official charged with IRA membership

DUBLIN (AP) — An official in the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party was arraigned Friday on Irish Republican Army charges in a case that highlights a murder pivotal to Northern Ireland’s peace process: the 2005 stabbing of a Catholic man outside a crowded pub.

The victim’s sisters, from a hardline Irish nationalist part of Belfast, complained the IRA orchestrated a cover-up that made convicting his killers impossible. They defied death threats to take their campaign for justice all the way to the White House, receiving top-level U.S. backing and embarrassing Sinn Fein. Analysts say the political furor speeded the IRA’s September 2005 decision to renounce violence and disarm.