BBC News has reported that Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Féin, was arrested on Wednesday April 30th and is being held by Northern Ireland police in connection with the 1972 murder of Jean McConville. McConville was abducted, executed and buried in secret on Shelling Hill beach in County Louth, Ireland. Her body was discovered in 2003.
The story, which is still developing, does not yet expand on Adams’ connection, but it does include information about Ivor Bell, 77, leader of the Provisional IRA in the 70’s, who was charged based on the interview he gave to researchers at Boston College. Although the researchers told the interviewees that the tapes would only be released after their deaths, some of the content was handed over to U.S. authorities.
AP News includes that Adams was arrested on suspicion of involvement in McConville’s murder. Adams was implicated in the murder by two former IRA members, who also gave interviews to Boston College. Adams confirmed his arrest today, stating that it is a voluntary, prearranged interview. Here’s Adam’s statement as reported by AP:
“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.”
The ongoing investigation of McConville’s murder is evidence that the shock of sectarian violence still reverberates in the present. The politics of the Troubles and justifications for violence, any political rhetoric for or against the Union or the Republic pale in comparison to the actors’ collective culpability in sectarian atrocities. Our memory of the Troubles should lie, as Heaney wrote in The Graubelle Man:
with the actual weight
of each hooded victim,
slashed and dumped.