Sinn Féin today denied a man who shot at a gang attacking his home had been forced to flee in fear of his life.
Party chairman Mr Mitchel McLaughlin rejected the claims Mr Joseph McCloskey was forced to leave Derry because of Provisional threats.
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Mr McCloskey's mother Bridie also alleged the threat had been widened to include her entire family and she demanded assurances from Sinn Féin's Mid Ulster MLA Mr Martin McGuinness they would not be harmed.
Mr McCloskey fired a single shot from a legally held weapon on Monday night when five masked men with guns and sledgehammers tried to break into his house in the mainly Catholic Shantallow estate.
Police had since arrested a man undergoing treatment for gunshot wounds to his leg in Altnagelvin Hospital in the city.
Sinn Féin did not comment on the row yesterday but this morning Mr McLaughlin said: "It is my authoritative information - and I have taken some trouble before I would go public on this - that there is no expulsion threat against her son, Joseph, nor was there any threat issued against the entire family as Mrs McCloskey claimed in her media interviews yesterday."
The attack on Mr McCloskey's home on Drumleck Gardens appeared to have been linked to a bar brawl some days earlier.
Mr McLaughlin would not say whether he had information on any IRA involvement but said on BBC Radio Ulster: "It is my understanding that the situation that involved the McCloskeys was something that they had to take some responsibility for creating in the first place and I believe that we can resolve this."
PA