Sinn Féin Leader Gerry Adams And The 1972 Murder of ‘IRA Informer’ Jean McConville
Undated file photo of Jean McConville (left) with three of her children before she vanished in 1972 as Jean McConville’s IRA killers tried to silence her son days after she vanished, it has been revealed. Michael McConville, who was 11 when his mother was snatched from her west Belfast home in 1972, was abducted, beaten and threatened at gunpoint by young republicans intent on keeping her disappearance quiet. Issue date: Sunday November 3, 2013.
RIGHT now Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams is answering police questions. Or, maybe, he’s getting an actor to do it for him?
Addams has been questioned by Northern Ireland police in connection with the 1972 murder of Jean McConvill.
The BBC:
Mrs McConville, a 37-year-old widow and mother of 10, was abducted from her flat in the Divis area of west Belfast and shot by the IRA. Her body was recovered from a beach in County Louth in 2003.
She was one of the Disappeared, abducted by the IRA, killed and buried in secret graves.
Head shot of prominent Irish Republican and former IRA member Dolours Price.
Date: 31/05/1972
Many suffered. Former IRA member Dolours Price featured in a Telegraph report of 2012:
A convicted IRA bomber claimed that Adams had sanctioned a series of attacks on London in 1972, including the bombing of the Old Bailey, which killed one man and injured 200 more. The claims were made by a woman at the centre of a legal battle in America over testimony she gave to an academic research project into the Troubles.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland has been involved in lengthy legal action to obtain tapes made of Dolours Price, in which she discusses her activity in the IRA. The police believe her evidence will help solve a notorious series of murders involving victims known as the “disappeared”, who were abducted and killed by the IRA in the belief they were “informers”….
I drove away Jean McConville. I don’t know who gave the instructions to execute her. Obviously it was decided between the General Headquarters staff and the people in Belfast. Gerry Adams would have been part of that negotiation as to what was to happen to her.” Of Mrs McConville, she said: “I had a call one night and Adams was in a house down the Falls Road and she’d been arrested by Cumann women and held for a couple of days. She got into my car and as far as she was concerned she was being taken away by the Legion of Mary to a place of safety.
“It wasn’t my decision to disappear her, thank God. All I had to do was drive her from Belfast to Dundalk. I even got her fish and chips and cigarettes before I left her.” She added: “You don’t deserve to die if you are an unpleasant person as she was but you do deserve to die if you are an informer, I do believe that. Particularly in a war, that is the Republican way.”
Price is no longer alive.
The actor Stephen Rea, right, carries the coffin of his ex-wife, Dolours Price at her funeral in west Belfast, Northern Ireland, Monday, January, 28, 2013. Price, an Irish Republican Army veteran who accused Sinn Fein party chief Gerry Adams of involvement in IRA killings and bombings died on Wednesday, at her home in Malahide, north of Dublin, and was possibly the result of a drug overdose and foul play was not suspected. But it could have implications as far away as the U.S. Supreme Court. In interviews Price repeatedly described Adams as her IRA commander in Catholic west Belfast in the early 1970s when the outlawed group was secretly abducting, executing and burying more than a dozen suspected informers in unmarked graves. Adams rejects the charges. Since 2011 Northern Ireland’s police have been fighting a legal battle with Boston College to secure audiotaped interviews with Price detailing her IRA career to see if they contain evidence relating to unsolved crimes, particularly the 1972 kidnapping and murder of a Belfast widow, Jean McConville. Price allegedly admitted being the IRA member who drove McConville across the Irish border to an IRA execution squad. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison) Date: 28/01/2013
Jean McConville was accused of being an informer. She wasn’t one. Well, so said the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman in 2006.
Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan with Michael McConville, the son of Jean McConville, at the Ombudsman office in Belfast.
Picture date: Friday July 7, 2006. A mother of 10 who was abducted and shot dead by the IRA nearly 34 years ago was officially cleared today of allegations that she was an informer. Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan said her investigators had found no evidence Jean McConville passed information to the security services. See PA story ULSTER Death. See PA story should read:Paul Faith/PA Date: 07/07/2006
The Beeb adds:
Police said a 65-year-old man presented himself to Antrim police station on Wednesday evening and was arrested.
In a statement, Sinn Féin said:
“Last month Gerry Adams said he was available to meet the PSNI about the Jean McConville case. That meeting is taking place this evening.”
Police hunted for the dead woman’s body.
Helen McKendry back at Templetown beach in Co Louth, Irish Republic as the dig resumes after ten months, for the remains of Helen’s mother Jean McConville, which is believed to be on or near the beach. Jean was abducted and murdered by the IRA before Christmas 1972. * The final search for the remains of IRA murder victims, known as The Disappeared, who were secretly buried in the Irish Republic over 20 years ago has begun. Date: 02/05/2000
In 2003, they found her remains.
Jean McConville’s coffin is caried past the Divis Flats, Falls Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she was abducted by the IRA in 1974, after her funerl at St. Paul’s Church, Falls Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mrs McConville was killed by the IRA in 1974, her body only being discovered on a beach near Dundalk in Ireland earlier this year.
Date: 30/10/2003
Agnes McConville (centre light reddish hair) is comforted by her brother Jim McConville, as they follow their mother, Jean McConville’s coffin, down the Falls Road in West Belfast. Mrs McConville was killed by the IRA in 1974, her body only being discovered on a beach near Dundalk in Ireland earlier this year. Date: 30/10/2003
In March 2014, Ivor Bell, 77, a leader in the Provisional IRA in the 1970s, was charged with aiding and abetting the murder.
The case against Bell is based on an interview he allegedly gave to researchers at Boston College in the US. The Boston College tapes are a series of candid, confessional interviews with former loyalist and republican paramilitaries, designed to be an oral history of the Troubles.
The paramilitaries were told the tapes would only be made public after their deaths.
However, after a series of court cases in the United States, some of the content has been handed over to the authorities.
In this photo dated Friday Jan. 13, 2012, Anthony McIntyre, former IRA member is seen in Drogheda, Ireland. Ed Moloney, a former Belfast journalist, and the former IRA member who collected the interviews, Anthony McIntyre, go to court next Tuesday in Boston seeking to persuade Judge William Young to let Boston College keep the audiotapes out of the hands of Belfast police who are probing the Irish Republican Army’s 1972 killing of Jean McConville, the Belfast mother 10. Researchers fighting the handover in court next week warn that disclosure could trigger attacks against IRA veterans involved in the secrecy-shrouded project and undermine Northern Ireland’s peace.
The research was no longer a secret.
File photo dated 29/01/1973 of Gerry Adams (centre) in the guards of honour at the funeral of an IRA member.
Posted: 30th, April 2014 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
