Northern Irish police contact Sinn Fein members over investigation into parade protest

BELFAST, Oct 8 (Reuters) – Northern Irish police have contacted representatives of Sinn Fein in relation to their investigation into a protest that has blocked a Protestant parade from marching through a Catholic area for almost two weeks, the Irish nationalist party said.

Thousands of protesters, including Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Fein and party leader Mary Lou McDonald, gathered on the Catholic Garvaghy Road to stop the September 26 march after it was allowed to proceed for the first time since the contentious route was banned in 1998.

Annual attempts by the Orange Order to march through the area triggered unrest across the British-run region before the route was banned the same year the Good Friday Agreement largely ended the three decades of violence known as the “Troubles.”

Police opened an investigation into what it called an unlawful protest and said on Thursday that individuals would receive letters regarding interviews after it had identified people reasonably suspected of committing offences.

Sinn Fein, which leads Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government alongside its main pro-British rival, said a number of its representatives and party members received correspondence from police, without naming them.

“Sinn Féin will continue to stand with the Garvaghy Road residents who should be allowed to live in peace and free from sectarian intimidation,” the party said in a statement.

Gerry Carroll, a lawmaker from the smaller People Before Profit party, said separately that he had received an invitation from police to attend a voluntary interview under caution in connection with the protest.

The dispute has destabilised the British-run region’s fragile devolved government – a key plank of the 1998 peace deal – with Sinn Fein’s partners the Democratic Unionist Party calling for O’Neill and other lawmakers to be prosecuted.

“A political title is not a shield, and no one is above the law,” the party said in a statement on Thursday.

(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson; Writing by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Daniel Wallis)