Northern Ireland police arrest former IRA head Gerry Adams over 1972 murder
Gerry Adams, current leader of Irish political party Sinn Fein and former head of the IRA, arrested in connection with 1972 murder of suspected informer Jean McConville
Northern Ireland police arrested Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams on Wednesday as part of an investigation into one of the province’s most controversial murders, a move likely to cause a political earthquake in Belfast and Dublin.
A man once reviled in Britain as the spokesman for the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the 1980s, Adams reinvented himself as a Northern Ireland peacemaker and then as a populist opposition politician in the Irish parliament.
His Sinn Fein party on Wednesday said he was being questioned by police investigating the 1972 abduction and murder of mother-of-10 Jean McConville. The police said a 65-year-old Adams had been arrested by detectives investigating the killing.
Adams, who has always denied membership of the IRA said he was “innocent of any part” in the killing.
“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.