1st May 2014 13:17
London (Alliance News) - Police in Northern Ireland were on Thursday continuing to question Gerry Adams, president of the Irish republican party Sinn Fein, in the 1972 murder of a widowed mother of ten.
Adams, who has repeatedly been accused of playing a leading role in the terrorist Irish Republican Army (IRA), has always denied that he had any involvement in ordering the notorious killing.
Jean McConville, 37, was taken from her flat in the Northern Irish capital of Belfast and shot by the IRA after members falsely accused her of being an informer for British security services.
Her body was secretly buried on a beach in the Republic of Ireland and was not found until 2003.
Her son Michael, who was 11 when his mother died, told the BBC his family was "glad" the Northern Irish police force was "doing their job."
"We didn't think it (Adams' arrest) would ever take place, but we are quite glad that it is taking place. All we're looking for is justice for our mother. Our mother, on the seventh of next month, would have been 80 years of age," he continued.
He knew who had killed his mother, he added, and had seen the perpetrators on "many occasions" since then, but was afraid to speak out in case he or a member of his family was murdered. He himself was abducted and beaten by the IRA a week after his mother's murder, he said.
"Everybody thinks that the IRA has gone away, but they have not. If we tell, we will be shot," he said, adding that he hoped people would understand why he could not name the killers.
Adams was arrested late Wednesday after he "voluntarily" presented himself for questioning at a police station in Antrim.
In a statement, he said he had been the victim of "well publicized, malicious allegations" and that he was "innocent of any part in the abduction, killing or burial of Mrs McConville."
Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein's deputy leader, said the timing of the decision to arrest Adams, which comes shortly before local and European Parliament elections, was "politically motivated and designed to damage Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein.
"There has been a concerted and malicious effort to link Gerry Adams to this case for some considerable time," she added.
Sinn Fein has ministerial posts in the Northern Ireland government, as well as holding seats in the parliament of the Republic of Ireland. One of those seats is held by Adams.
Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny rejected McDonald's comments, saying: "What is the most important thing here? The most important fact is that Jean McConville was murdered, a widowed mother of 10 children, and her body was not found for very many years.
"This is still a live murder case, this is still a live investigation. All I can say is that I hope the president of Sinn Fein answers in the best way he can, to the fullest extent that he can, questions that are being asked about a live murder investigation."
Peter Robinson, first minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, also gave his support to police and said the rule of law must be upheld.
"We want to have the certainty that everyone who has been a victim of IRA or any other terrorism has the ongoing hope that justice might be done, and that anybody who has perpetrated an act of terrorism has the ongoing fear that justice might be done," he said.
Nobody had ever been charged in connection with McConville's murder until March, when 77-year-old Ivor Bell, a veteran republican, was charged with aiding and abetting the killing.
The evidence against him is allegedly based on an interview he gave for a 2001 research project on the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland, known as The Troubles, by Boston College in the United States.
Academics and journalists interviewed former members of paramilitary organizations, both republican and loyalist, on condition that the contents would not be revealed until after they had died.
When former IRA commander in Belfast Brendan Hughes died in 2008, his account was made available. In it, he accused Adams of involvement in McConville's murder.
Before she died last year, Dolours Price, an IRA member who bombed the Old Bailey court in London in 1973, also accused Adams of ordering McConville's murder.
Following a legal challenge by the police force of Northern Ireland, a US court last year ruled that all tapes relating to McConville's murder should be handed over to it.
Five other people have also recently been arrested for questioning over the killing.
Copyright dpa