Gerry Adams Arrested For 1972 IRA Assassination

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Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin leader and chief architect of the Irish republican movement's peace strategy, has been arrested by police over a notorious Troubles murder that has haunted his political career for decades.

The veteran Sinn Féin president put himself forward for questioning by the Police Service of Northern Ireland in connection with the kidnapping, killing and secret burial of Jean McConville.

The family of the widowed mother of 10, whom the IRA "disappeared" just before Christmas 1972, welcomed the arrest and said they hoped it would lead to the whole truth ultimately being exposed about their mother's murder.

But Sinn Féin's deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald, who sits alongside Adams in the Irish parliament, described the arrest of her fellow TD (MP) as politically motivated after a "concerted and malicious effort to link Gerry Adams to this case for considerable time".

A spokesman for the Northern Ireland Office rejected the suggestion that the arrest was politically motivated. The spokesman said: "This is entirely an operational matter for the PSNI."

A PSNI spokesman said: "Detectives from the serious crime branch investigating the abduction and murder of Jean McConville in 1972 have arrested a 65-year-old man in Antrim. The suspect is currently being interviewed by detectives at the serious crime suite in Antrim police station."

Just before Adams walked into the police station on Wednesday evening, he denied to RTÉ television that he had anything to with the McConville murder. Adams also rejected recent claims by former IRA bomber and convicted killer Peter Rogers that he and the Sinn Féin deputy first minister Martin McGuinness had ordered him to transport explosives to bomb Britain in 1980.

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