Gerry Adams, leader of the Sinn Féin political party, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of ordering the Irish Republican Army’s infamous 1972 abduction, execution and secret burial of a young Belfast widow who left 10 kids behind.
Police had long been expected to grill Adams about the murder of 37-year-old Jean McConville, whom the IRA killed in the belief she was a spy.
But witnesses said her only “crime” was coming to the aid of a British soldier who had been wounded by the IRA.
She was snatched from her home in December 1972 by 12 armed IRA members, men and women alike.
Experts on the IRA said that Adams, now 65, served as its top commander for decades, but he has always denied any leadership role in the outlawed group, infamous for its attacks on military and civilian targets.
“I believe that the killing of Jean McConville and the secret burial of her body was wrong and a grievous injustice to her and her family,” Adams said in a statement Wednesday. “Well-publicized, malicious allegations have been made against me. I reject these. While I have never disassociated myself from the IRA and I never will, I am innocent of any part in the abduction, killing or burial of Mrs. McConville.”
Adams downplayed his arrest as a voluntary interview with Northern Irish cops.
Embarrassed over the killing of a single mom, the IRA did not admit to the atrocity until 1999, and her unmarked grave was discovered by accident near a beach in the Irish Republic in 2003.
Adams was implicated in the killing by two IRA veterans who gave taped interviews to researchers for Boston College history archives on the four-decade Northern Ireland conflict, known as “The Troubles.”
Belfast cops took legal steps to get hold of the interviews, parts of which were already published after the 2008 death of one of the IRA men who spoke, Brendan Hughes.
In his interview, Hughes, a reputed longtime deputy to Adams within the Belfast IRA, said McConville was killed on Adams’ orders.
Hughes said Adams oversaw a special unit committed to identifying, killing and secretly burying Belfast Catholic civilians suspected of spying on behalf of police or the British Army.
An independent investigation by Northern Ireland police complaints watchdog in 2006 found no evidence that McConville had been a spy.
With Post Wires