The Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has been arrested in connection with the 1972 abduction, murder and disappearance of Jean McConville.
Detectives from the PSNI’s serious crime branch are questioning Mr Adams at Antrim station about the murder of the widowed mother of 10 children.
Mr Adams remained in police custody overnight following his arrest yesterday.
The BBC gives some background.
Mrs McConville, one of Northern Ireland’s Disappeared, was kidnapped in front of her children after being wrongly accused of being an informer.
The claim that she was an informer was dismissed after an official investigation by the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman.
The widow was held at one or more houses before being shot and buried in secret.
The Disappeared are those who were abducted, murdered and secretly buried by republicans during the Troubles.
The IRA admitted in 1999 that it murdered and buried at secret locations nine of the Disappeared.
She kidnapped in front of her children. That’s a nice touch, isn’t it.
The featured speakers at my college graduation were Gerry Adams and Cardinal Bernard Law. One’s a terrorist and the other’s a pedophile enabler in chief.
And they wonder why they don’t get donations from me.
There’s deep suspicion about the timing of this arrest just 3 weeks before the European elections. I mean, it’s not like the whereabouts of Gerry Adams have been secret these past 40 years.
Suspicion from whom, though?
Suspicion from Adams himself – http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/gerry-adams-held-over-murder-of-jean-mcconville-9308536.html – from Martin McGuinness – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-27241477 – as you would expect! Also mutterings from various lawyers and commentators pointing out the source of this “information” and its utter uselessness in an evidentiary context – both informants dead, both sworn enemies of Adams after the war-or-peace split, not taken under conditions or in a format which would allow its use in court.
Also there is a curious restraint being shown by UK press – even the normally rabid parts of it.
One of Mrs McConville’s children has been on radio saying he’s still too afraid to say who did it ‘cos they’ll get him. Then one of his siblings said she was willing to tell – said that more than 12 hours ago, so far PSNI has not been to take her up on it.
David Cameron, who is quite unable to understand the complexity of NI politics – not enough brain cells – is grinning inanely. The idea that personnel and methods and weapons were interchangeable between politics and straight thuggery – on all sides – would be beyond him.
Also, there’s me. The rumour of Adams’ involvement has been around for years and years, if these tapes really are all the cops can come up with then this is likely an exercise in putting the wind up someone or some group. And my relatives over there are Prods!
SDLP woman is on the radio this minute saying she has no problem with it all.