PSNI study claim over Adams and McConville
POLICE are examining an RTE documentary that raised allegations about Gerry Adams and the death of Jean McConville.
The PSNI confirmed that they were studying the programme, after TUV leader Jim Allister called for the arrest of the Sinn Fein president.
The documentary Voices From The Grave, which was broadcast in the Republic on Tuesday night, was based on the recent book of the same name by Ed Moloney.
The book and documentary have drawn on audio testimony by Brendan Hughes, a former IRA hunger striker who died in 2008, and David Ervine, the UVF man and Progressive Unionist Party leader, who died in 2007.
The pair were among contributors to an archive at Boston College in America, in which former paramilitaries have spoken candidly about their role in the Troubles on the condition that their interviews will only be released after their deaths.
The book’s release earlier this year sparked controversy over Mr Hughes’s suggestion that the abduction and murder of Ms McConville was ordered by Mr Adams, who has always denied IRA membership.
The Catholic mother of 14 was seized from her home in west Belfast in December 1972 and killed for reasons that have never been explained. Theories range from her having been an informer to her having been seen comforting a dying British soldier.
Ms McConville became one of the most famous of the so-called ‘disappeared’ during the three decades that her body was missing, before her remains were found in 2003.
Mr Allister said: “The fresh revelations linking Gerry Adams to the Jean McConville kidnapping and murder should cause his arrest and questioning about one of the most harrowing and heartless terrorist murders of the Troubles.”
Asked whether police were taking any action in light of the documentary, a PSNI spokesman said: “Police are studying the contents of the book and the programme.”
Mr Allister said that “no-one believes Adams’ lies about his past, yet he heads a party sitting at the heart of government”.
He added that the programme “adds to the dismay of law-abiding citizens” about how “in the new Northern Ireland Adams and his ilk are immune from being made amenable” for their past.
A spokesman for the SDLP, which sent out a press release reminder on Tuesday that the documentary was being shown, would only say yesterday: “We are letting Brendan speak for himself from beyond the grave.”
A Sinn Fein spokesman at Stormont said yesterday that due to the recess, he was unable to get anyone within the party to respond to Mr Allister.
