THE family of a west Belfast man maintained a vigil at his hospital bedside as he fought for his life after being viciously beaten by thugs last weekend.Former IRA prisoner Frank "Bap" McGreevy remained in a critical condition in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast on Tuesday days after being beaten more than 60 times around the head by a pick axe wielding gang who attacked him in his Falls Road home on Saturday.The attack is being blamed on a local gang of thugs who regularly drink and take drugs outside the victim's home.In 1975 McGreevy was sentenced to life imprisonment for an IRA bomb attack on a bar in the Protestant Sandy Row area of Belfast. Senior Republicans insist that while McGreevy had been a member of its organization, he had not been involved in the attack on the Protestant bar.A 20-year-old man who had been on the run from prison at the time of the attack on McGreevy has handed himself into police.Sinn Fein's Tom Hartley criticized the police, claiming that a community worker had told officers that the suspect had been recently seen in the area."There is anger that the PSNI once again failed to respond to information," he said. "This community person spoke a number of times about his whereabouts and the PSNI failed to act."Hartley said that anger was made worse by claims that local people pointed the suspect out to police shortly after the attack but no effort was made to arrest him at that time.The attack is being seen as an example of the ongoing vacuum in policing in Republican areas, despite Sinn Fein's decision to support policing last January.On St. Patrick's night a 19-month-old baby boy was abducted when the car his parents were driving was hijacked in south Belfast. The car and baby were found safe and well nearby a short time later.In September last year greengrocer Harry Holland was stabbed to death while trying to prevent a teenage gang from stealing his van outside his west Belfast home.The attack of McGreevy comes as the Democratic Unionist Party insists that the time is not yet right to transfer policing and justice powers from the British government to the Stormont Executive.Control of policing and justice is supposed to be transferred to the Stormont Executive in May, but Unionists argue more time is needed to build more confidence in Protestant communities.Sinn Fein's Alex Maskey says Unionist opposition to the transfer of powers had nothing to do with policing and justice, but was purely political.