Robert McCartney: The alleyway murder in Belfast and the women who fought as far as the White House

It is a Sunday night in the pub.

There is football on the TV and people packed around the bar – then suddenly, violence erupts.

Bottles are smashed and broken glass is slashed across the throat of one of the biggest men in the bar.

The melee spills out into the street, where the injured man says out loud the name of the man he believes attacked him.

There is, he says later, an immediate reaction with hostile men in the crowd around him saying: “You’re getting it, you’re getting it.”

A knife flashes and two friends are left bleeding heavily on the pavement.

One of them is dying.

Robert McCartney, an engaged father-of-two, took no part in the violence, according to the few available accounts of what happened that night in January 2005.

But the 33-year-old ended up losing his life, and no one has ever been held to account for his murder – an outcome that reverberated across the world and is now the subject of a documentary series, Murder in Belfast: Sisters Seeking Justice.