attackers were burned, CCTV tapes were removed from the bar and destroyed and bar staff were threatened. No ambulance was called. McCartney and Devine were noticed by a police car on routine patrol, who called an ambulance to the scene. When the police launched the murder investigation they were met with a "wall of silence"; none of the estimated seventy or so witnesses to the altercation came forward with information. In conversations with family members, seventy-one potential witnesses claimed to have been in the pub's toilets at the time of the attacks. As the toilet measures just four feet by three feet, this led to the toilets being dubbed the TARDIS, after the time machine in the television series Doctor Who, which is much bigger on the inside than on the outside. Sinn Féin suspended twelve members of the party and the IRA expelled three members some weeks later. Political fall-out Gerry Adams, then president of Sinn Féin, urged witnesses to come forward to "the family, a solicitor, or any other authoritative or reputable person or body". Adams continued, "I want to make it absolutely clear that no one involved acted as a republican or on behalf of republicans". He suspended twelve members of Sinn Féin. Adams stopped short of asking witnesses to contact the police directly. The usefulness of making witness statements to the victim's family or to a solicitor was derided by the McCartneys and by a prominent lawyer and SDLP politician, Alban Maginness, soon afterwards. On 16 February 2005, the IRA issued a statement denying involvement in the murder and calling on the perpetrators to "take responsibility". On 8 March 2005, the IRA issued an unprecedented statement saying that four people were directly involved in the murder, that the IRA knew their identity, that two were IRA volunteers, and that the IRA had made an offer to McCartney's family to shoot the people directly involved in the murder. In May 2005, Sinn Féin lost its council seat in the Pottinger area, which covers the Short Strand, with the McCartney family attributing the loss to events surrounding the murder. Since this time, the sisters of Robert McCartney have maintained an increasingly public campaign for justice, which saw Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness make a public statement that the sisters should be careful that they were not being manipulated for political ends. The McCartney family travelled to the