User:St170e/sandbox/Killing of Kevin McGuigan

The killing of Kevin McGuigan took place on 13 August 2015 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. McGuigan, a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, was shot dead at Comber Court in the Short Strand area of Belfast. The Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) announced on 22 August 2015 that some of the members of the Provisional IRA "were involved" in the killing of McGuigan, and that "some of [the IRA's] structure from the 1990s remains broadly in place".

Sinn Féin, Northern Ireland's second largest party, denied the existence of the Provisional IRA and said there was "no Provisional IRA involvement in the killing of Kevin McGuigan". McGuigan's family publicly accused the Provisional IRA of involvement in the killing, but Sinn Féin also rebuked this claim.

His killing prompted the First Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson, to stand aside and three of his Democratic Unionist Party colleagues to resign from their ministerial roles in the Northern Ireland Executive. The Ulster Unionist Party also resigned from the Northern Ireland Executive after 18 years of power-sharing. Mike Nesbitt, the party's leader at the time, said that Sinn Féin's denial that the IRA existed "made it impossible to do business with them".

Background
Kevin McGuigan was a former member of the Provisional IRA, an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that was active during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The IRA ceasefire in 1997 led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, establishing peace in Northern Ireland. In 2005, the IRA Army Council announced an end to its armed campaign, an end to paramilitary activity and instructed its volunteers to dump weapons. In 2008, the Army Council "was no longer operational" according to the Independent Monitoring Commission. Despite the IRA's disarmament, some unionists, including DUP leader Ian Paisley, were sceptical of such disarmament and were distrustful of the process.

Prior to his killing, McGuigan was a police suspect in the killing of a former senior IRA figure, Gerard 'Jock' Davison. The Provisional IRA "believed [McGuigan] was the gunman who shot dead [Davison]". As a result, it was alleged that the Provisional IRA ordered McGuigan to be killed, thus proving the continued existence of the IRA in Northern Ireland.