Belfast Project: Boston Prosecuting Irish Politics

Belfast Project: Boston Prosecuting Irish Politics
Chris Bray
Letters Blogatory
6 May 2013

The Supreme Court has turned aside a legal appeal from Belfast Project researchers Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre, and IRA interviews will likely soon be transferred from the archives at Boston College to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. (A more limited appeal from BC, still pending, relates to only some of the subpoenaed interviews.)

The Irish press has been busy covering this development, and the stories tell you everything you need to know about the federal subpoenas of confidential academic research materials. They all center on Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein politician alleged to have ordered Jean McConville’s murder in 1972.

“Like his hero, Fidel Castro, Adams plans to go on and on,” reads an April 27 editorial in the Herald, a Dublin newspaper. “Until now many of us have given him the benefit of the doubt on both counts.”

But not anymore, the newspaper concludes:

“Meanwhile, Sinn Fein goes from strength to strength. As long as a growing number of voters conveniently forget about the hell that Jean McConville suffered, few among the Sinn Fein ranks will challenge their leader for life.”

This is the point of the effort to breach the Boston College archives, openly discussed in the Irish press as the object of the investigation: to stop Sinn Fein from going “from strength to strength,” preventing voters from conveniently forgetting the actions of the IRA,and convincing party members to challenge their leader.

This is not law enforcement.

Similarly, many of the Irish news stories about the pending release of the tapes say that the move could lead to the “downfall” of Gerry Adams. Here are some words and phrases you will not find in any of those stories:

• “prosecution”
• “murder charges”
• “arrest”

Because none of that is the point. The Herald does refer to the possibility that Adams will face “a case,” but everyone involved knows what case that is. The McConville family is likely to sue the Sinn Fein leader in civil court. This, too, has already been reported.

“We owe it to McConville to reveal IRA interviews and tackle Adams,” the Herald headline reads.

Gerry Adams is to be tackled, challenged, sued, unmasked before an audience of voters, and weakened before the members of his political party. He is not going to be convicted in a court of law on murder charges, and no one—no one, period—believes that he will be.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston is using federal subpoenas to intervene in Irish politics, not to assist in a British murder investigation. I have been saying this for two years. Now the Irish press is saying it too.

Will anyone bother to notice this act of political malfeasance? Or do we simply accept that federal prosecutors should loan their authority to foreign political causes?

IRA recordings on McConville death ‘may bring about Adams’ downfall’

IRA recordings on McConville death ‘may bring about Adams’ downfall’
LOUISE HOGAN AND FIONNAN SHEAHAN
Irish Independent
02 MAY 2013

THE PSNI has begun making plans to take possession of the controversial Boston College interviews with former IRA members after a US Supreme Court ruling.

The Government is understood to be concerned that the release of the tapes could destabilise the peace process in the North and the power-sharing government.

The tapes of interviews with former provos are believed to implicate Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams in the murder of Belfast mother-of-10 Jean McConville.

The pressure is mounting on Mr Adams, after one of the interviewers at the centre of the North’s Troubles project, predicted it could bring about the politician’s downfall.

A spokeswoman for the PSNI said: “We are making plans to take possession of the material and proceed with our inquiry.”

The discussions with republican and loyalist paramilitaries formed part of an oral history of the Troubles.

Ex-IRA member Dolours Price, now dead, was one of the interviewees, and it is claimed she discussed the disappearance of Ms McConville.

Authorities investigating Ms McConville’s disappearance had called for the US government to subpoena the documents, invoking a treaty between Britain and the USA. The Department of Foreign Affairs and the Irish Embassy are monitoring the matter.

But a government source said the Coalition was worried about what way the tapes would be made public.

“We’d have a concern about what might happen when they are released,” a source said.

Critic

Former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntyre and journalist Ed Moloney, who compiled the interviews, had appealed to halt the release of the interviews with the late Ms Price to the PSNI.

But their appeal was rejected when the US Supreme Court declined to hear it.

It is believed Ms Price, who died in January and had been a vocal critic of Sinn Fein for accepting the Good Friday Agreement, may have implicated Mr Adams in the McConville killing.

Mr Adams has continuously denied membership of the IRA and any involvement in the mother’s abduction and killing.

The Sinn Fein president has insisted both former IRA member Brendan Hughes and the late Ms Price “were telling lies” when they claimed he was responsible for Mrs McConville’s disappearance.

In a heated interview with Miriam O’Callaghan on RTE’s ‘Prime Time’, Mr Adams insisted they were both people who had gone on in their lives to become “opponents”, felt he had “sold out” and allied themselves with “various so-called dissident groups”.

Mr Adams became visibly rattled as he denied there were any murders that he should bear responsibility for during the Troubles.

Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn said the agreement with the Belfast project was that the tapes would be kept confidential to the extent American law would allow until the death of the participants.

“Dolours Price’s death makes the issue moot,” he said.

Mr Dunn said the release of the tapes was now a matter for the US Department of Justice.

However, Boston College is still awaiting a ruling from the US First Circuit Court of Appeals on its appeal in relation to some of the other tapes.

Mr Moloney said that the contents of some of the interviews could bring about the downfall of Mr Adams.

“With Gerry Adams will also fall the peace process,” he stated.

FF backs call for Adams to ‘tell truth’ about past

FF backs call for Adams to ‘tell truth’ about past
By JIM CUSACK
Sunday Independent
October 14 2012

TD joins McConville family in IRA allegations

Fianna Fail has joined the family of Jean McConville in calling for the questioning of Gerry Adams and convicted IRA bomber, Dolours Price, over her television claim that she drove the widowed mother-of-ten to her murder on a Co Louth beach in December 1972.

Price, 61, told an interviewer from America’s CBS last month that Adams also gave her orders to take part in the IRA’s bombing of the Old Bailey in London in 1973 in which one man was killed and more than a hundred injured. Price, her sister Marian, along with two men including Gerry Kelly, now a senior Sinn Fein figure, were arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Adams denies any involvement in the murder of Mrs McConville and also denies Price’s claim that he ordered her to bomb London. He also denies ever having been in the IRA.

In her interview with CBS television last month, Price was asked if she drove Mrs McConville to meet her death. She replied: “I drove the car, yeah.” She was then asked if she was aware of the likely consequences. She replied: “I was aware that that would be her end, yeah.”

Asked if this had bothered her, she answered: “No, no, not at all.”

Price, once married to actor Stephen Rea, now lives in Malahide, north Dublin. She has yet to be questioned by gardai about her claim to be directly involved in the murder of Mrs McConville, who was abducted in Belfast and driven to Templetown beach in Co Louth, where she was killed with a single shot to the back of the head and buried in a secret grave. Her body was discovered after part of it was exposed in 2003.

Yesterday, Mrs Helen McKendry, Jean McConville’s eldest daughter who, along with her husband, Seamus, started the campaign for the discovery of her mother’s remains, called for Price to be arrested and questioned about the murder.

“She’s shooting her mouth off talking about driving my mother to her murder. Of course she should be questioned,” says Helen McKendry.

“Her sister Marian is back in jail in the North [her parole was revoked for alleged involvement in dissident republican activity] and she should be back in jail now, too. I don’t know why she has not been arrested, and Gerry Adams.”

Fianna Fail’s justice spokesman Niall Collins TD launched an attack on Sinn Fein and its leader, saying: “Their refusal to tell the truth about Gerry Adams is a sinister and cynical betrayal of the support that the Irish people gave for the peace process in the first place.

“We know from the security reports of successive, cross-party Irish Ministers for Justice that Gerry Adams was not only a member of the PIRA, but a senior commander within the organisation. Now, we have the clear and unambiguous claim from a former close colleague and friend that he was personally involved in the abduction, torture, murder and disappearance of mother-of-10 Jean McConville.

“The response from Sinn Fein is to deny that he was ever a member, mutter about ‘media agendas’, and then talk in vague and meaningless terms about an ‘international conflict resolution process’. Gerry Adams doesn’t need an international panel of experts to shed light on what happened in the North. He just needs to start telling the truth.

“When asked about why he wouldn’t sue another individual who claims that she took orders from Adams personally for a bombing campaign in Britain, Gerry claims that he couldn’t afford to take a case.

“When reflecting on how disingenuous he is being with an answer like that, it’s worth remembering that before he moved to Dundalk, he received over €1m in expenses during his time as an absentee MP in West Belfast. This was on top of the ‘average industrial wage’ he received as an MLA in Stormont.”

Adams Must Decide How History Will Remember Him

Adams Must Decide How History Will Remember Him
Conor Forrest
Irish News Review
October 7, 2012

If the truth will have its way, another sad chapter of Northern Ireland’s violent history may finally be closed, should the testimony of an ex-IRA volunteer be joined to that of former IRA man, Brendan Hughes, and other former members who told their stories to the Boston college project whose aim it was and is to create and collect a repository of oral history concerning the Troubles.

Major pressure is to be heaped upon Gerry Adams in the Dáil following an interview given to the Sunday Telegraph by Dolours Price, a former member of the feared inner sanctum. Price, who was married to actor Stephen Rea, has remained disillusioned by the peace process and what she sees as Adams’ betrayal, and gave the Sunday Telegraph an interview concerning what she told the Boston project. The 61-year-old, who now lives in a quiet suburb in Dublin, has claimed that not only was Adams in the IRA but it was on his orders that victims were ferried across the border, a bombing campaign against a series of targets in mainland Britain, including the Old Bailey, as were the kidnappings of those viewed by the IRA as traitors, including one Jean McConville.

The allegations against Adams are nothing new. The family of Jean McConville in particular have always maintained the Sinn Féin leader’s role in her execution during the early 1970s on the basis of accusations concerning repeatedly relaying information to the British army through a radio in her home. Adams resolutely denies any involvement in the young woman’s death which has in some manner come to represent the atrocities committed by the IRA during the Troubles alongside the Omagh bombing. And until now no real hard evidence could be put forward to stick on Adams. Even when combined with the testimony of Brendan Hughes released by the Boston College after his death as per his agreement in the book ‘Voices from the Grave’ which offers a starkly different story to the one which Adams has always painted (namely his active involvement in the IRA), the proof is circumstantial and those who criticise him have a potential bias, being former IRA men and women who felt betrayed by a former leader. Unsurprising, really, when considering that the Troubles and the truth rarely go hand in hand.

The response from Adams hasn’t really been surprising. The solid, hard evidence mightn’t be there but public opinion will quite possibly mount against Adams, alongside political pressure from his colleagues in the Dáil who wouldn’t mind having a different scapegoat in the public eye (James Reilly, we’re looking at you). So really, at the heart of it, Adams will decide his own destiny. Despite the Good Friday Agreement which finally ended the Provo’s long armed campaign in the North, a page cannot be truly turned to a new side while the major players on both sides of the coin are not only publicly active in the present but shadily skirting their past. A new dawn is on the horizon with a new generation but the truth must out first. While he keeps his mouth shut, no one wins. The families of the disappeared want to know who and what caused their loved ones to die and is a constant and horrifying reminder of those thirty years of fear and violence.

Eventually, the truth will come out. Whether through legal wrangling or the passage of time and the deaths of those who told their stories, the contents of the Boston College project will be revealed, and new evidence will undoubtedly come to light. Two corroborating oral witnesses could be dismissed. Many more will surely not. And who knows what other dark secrets are yet to be revealed from within the depth of those archives. Adams and his image would do far better if he revealed any secrets he might be hiding about his past now, under no pressure and of his own accord. History, they say, will be the judge of us all. Adams must decide what it will say.

PSNI still probing Jean McConville murder

PSNI still probing Jean McConville murder
By Fionnan Sheahan
Belfast Telegraph
Tuesday, 9 October 2012

The PSNI says it is continuing to investigate the IRA murder of Belfast mother-of-10 Jean McConville — a killing that continues to cast a shadow over Gerry Adams.

The Sinn Fein president is poised to face the embarrassment of a special Dail debate on the so-called Disappeared, people murdered by the IRA and whose bodies were then hidden.

Former IRA members have implicated Mr Adams in Ms McConville’s murder.

Fine Gael TD Patrick O’Donovan has asked for time in the Dail to discuss the Disappeared.

“To date, nine bodies of the 16 ‘disappeared’ during the Troubles have been located. That means seven families remain in a terrible state of limbo, unable to get closure and fully mourn the death of their loved ones,” he said.

“By allowing for statements to be made on this matter in the Dail, the Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter TD, could update the House and the public on the progress made to date. It would also heighten public awareness on the issue, and might encourage anyone with any information to come forward,” he added.

Convicted IRA bomber Dolours Price has accused Mr Adams of involvement in the murder of Ms McConville from Belfast.

“Detectives are continuing to follow a number of lines of enquiry in relation to the murder of Jean McConville,” a PNSI spokesman said.

Mr Adams has repeatedly denied being a member of the IRA or any knowledge of the murder of Ms McConville.

---

FINE GAEL PRESS RELEASE

O’Donovan calls for Dáil to discuss the Disappeared

Fine Gael Limerick TD, Patrick O’Donovan, has written to the Government Chief Whip, Paul Kehoe TD, requesting that time be allocated in the Dáil to discuss the Disappeared. Deputy O’Donovan also intends to raise the issue at the next meeting of the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly, of which he is a member.

“I have asked the Chief Whip to consider allowing for statements to be made in the Dáil on the Disappeared and the plight facing their families. To date, nine bodies of the sixteen people ‘disappeared’ during the troubles have been located. That means seven families remain in a terrible state of limbo, unable to get closure and fully mourn the death of their loved ones.

“By allowing for statements to be made on this matter in the Dáil, the Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter TD, could update the House and the public on the progress made to date. It would also heighten public awareness on the issue, and might encourage anyone with any information to come forward.

“The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains has been working to locate remains since 1999, and their efforts are on-going. They are doing exceptionally important work on a cross border basis.

“We have reached a very important stage in British Irish relations, and the progress made by people on both sides of the border to improve links between communities should not be underestimated. However, for the families of the seven people who were killed and buried in unmarked graves, and whose remains have still not been found, time has stood still.

“I am hopeful that my request to discuss this issue in the Dáil will be granted and I also intend to raise the issue at the next meeting of the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly, later this month.”

ENDS

---

British Irish Parliamentary Assembly Press Release

BRITISH IRISH PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY TO MEET IN GLASGOW 22ND-23RD OCTOBER 2012
Added 5-Oct-2012

The 45th plenary of the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly will take place in the Grosvenor Hilton Hotel, Glasgow, from Monday 22nd – Tuesday 23rd October 2012.

This is the first occasion that the Assembly has met in Glasgow, and the only the second time that a plenary has been held in Scotland following a meeting in Edinburgh (as the British Irish Interparliamentary Body) in 2005.

The theme of the plenary will be “The Scottish Economy and Irish/Scottish Relations.”

A full agenda for the plenary including guest speakers will be available in due course.

Media outlets are welcome to attend or send a representative to the plenary. Those attending are requested to contact Ronan Farren, Q4 Public Relations for further information, accreditation and to make the necessary arrangements.

ENDS

Police ‘laying siege to journalism’ over claim Gerry Adams ordered killing

Police ‘laying siege to journalism’ over claim Gerry Adams ordered killing
PSNI demands notes and video from Sunday Telegraph and US broadcaster CBS over IRA bomber’s allegation
Henry McDonald
The Guardian
Sunday 7 October 2012

The Police Service of Northern Ireland wants to seize interview material from the Sunday Telegraph and American broadcaster CBS connected to an IRA bomber’s claim that Gerry Adams ordered one of the most notorious murders of the Troubles.

The Guardian has learned that the PSNI is seeking to obtain notes and video footage from the paper and the New York based television station in relation to Dolours Price’s allegation that the Sinn Fein president was in charge of a specialist IRA unit that “disappeared” and killed mother of 10 Jean McConville.

In the United States, the PSNI is already engaged in a lengthy legal battle soon to reach the US Supreme Court in its attempt to take tapes from Boston College that include Price’s testimony of her time in the IRA. The police want to use the Boston College interviews with IRA members with the material from the Sunday Telegraph and CBS as part of its investigation into the 1972 kidnapping and secret murder of the west Belfast widow.

An award winning journalist who set up the IRA and loyalist archive for Boston College said the PSNI’s latest move demonstrated that the police were “laying siege” to free, open journalism.

A PSNI spokeswoman said on Friday that the police were “pursuing all lines of inquiry in relation to the murder of Jean McConville.” The Guardian can reveal that this includes the most up to date interview with Dolours Price, the former Old Bailey bomber who know lives in North Dublin.

McConville was abducted from her home in the Divis Flats complex by an IRA unit just before Christmas 1972. The Provisional IRA accused her of being an informer who worked for the British Army – a charge her family has always disputed.

She became the most famous of 16 IRA victims known as the disappeared because after being interrogated and shot, their bodies were buried in secret locations mainly across the border in the Irish Republic. In her interview last month, Price claimed to be part of a highly secretive IRA unit called the Unknowns who were tasked with targeting suspected informers in the community, abducting them, killing them and burying them in covert locations.

Price also said that she took Jean McConville to her death across the border after she was dragged from her home at gunpoint in front of her children.

“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.

“I had a call one night and Adams was in a house down the Falls Road and she’d been arrested by Cumann [IRA's female unit] 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.”

Price was unrepentant about her alleged role in the disappearance and death of McConville. “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,” she told the Sunday Telegraph.

CBS last night confirmed it had received a letter from the PSNI about the Price interview adding “we are looking into the issues raised in the letter.” The Sunday Telegraph declined to comment but it is understood the PSNI has been in contact with the paper.

The director of the Belfast Project for Boston College Ed Moloney said he sincerely hoped both CBS and the Sunday Telegraph would resist police attempts to subpoena their material. “Clearly this case is developing into a major assault on privacy. Not content with assailing academic rights, the PSNI are now set to lay siege to the media as well. Where will this stop?” he said.

Moloney added: “It is clear that the PSNI is substituting the efforts of journalists for basic detective work.”

Sinn Fein and even some of its opponents in the Irish media have claimed Price is motivated by a long running enmity towards Adams, and is using the McConville murder to damage him and his party. Adams has strenuously denied not only involvement in the McConville disappearance and murder but of ever being involved in the IRA.

Price does admit that she is engaged in a “score settling” operation against Adams because he denies his alleged IRA past. Her critics, including some commentators in the Dublin press who have traditionally opposed the IRA, claim she is trying to damage the peace process in her feud with Adams.

But Seamus McKendry, Jean McConville’s son-in-law and long time campaigner for the “disappeared”, told the Guardian he welcomed the news that the PSNI wanted to seize the Sunday Telegraph and CBS material relating to Price’s latest allegations.

“Helen [Jean McConville's oldest daughter] and I would be very much in favour of this move by the police. Every piece of the jigsaw is important in terms of the police building a case on Jean’s murder. So just as we have always supported the PSNI in their bid to get the Boston College tapes we think it is entirely justified that they are able to pore over the interviews the paper and the broadcaster carried out,’ he said.

McKendry also called on the Garda Siochána to arrest Dolours Price following her claims in the Sunday Telegraph and on CBS. “She is living openly in Malahide, north Dublin, so I don’t see why the Garda cannot arrest and question her about what she said in her very own words. I was at Jean’s inquest and all the evidence pointed to her being shot dead in County Louth in the Irish Republic, which means the crime was committed in the Garda’s jurisdiction. So it’s up to the Garda to question her,” he added.

The IRA only admitted in 1999 that it had been behind Jean McConville’s disappearance and murder. Republicans had previously spread the false story across west Belfast that the widow had abandoned her 10 children – many of whom were later placed in care homes – and run off to England with a British soldier. Her remains were finally located in August 2003 at Templetown beach in County Louth.

Kenny calls for Adams IRA admission

Kenny calls for Adams IRA admission
Gerry Adams has always denied having been a member of the IRA
MARY MINIHAN
Irish Times
Sunday, September 30, 2012

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness has been “forthright enough and honest enough” to admit his past membership of the IRA and called on party leader Gerry Adams to do the same.

Mr Adams has always denied having been a member of the IRA.

Speaking at last night’s Fine Gael presidential dinner in Dublin, Mr Kenny said he believed Mr Adams had also been a member of the IRA’s so-called army council.

“From all of the evidence that I’ve read and all the evidence that I’ve heard, my belief is that he was a member of the IRA and I’m led to believe he was also a member of the army council of the IRA,” he said.

“When Deputy Adams says to me that he wants a truth and reconciliation commission in respect of dealings in Northern Ireland, I’d like him to be absolutely truthful about this.

“I had a serious discussion with Martin McGuinness, deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, and he was forthright enough and honest enough to admit that he was a member of the IRA. Gerry Adams might like to make a statement about that.”

Adams says IRA allegations against him ‘deeply hurtful’

Adams says IRA allegations against him ‘deeply hurtful’
MARY MINIHAN
The Irish Times
Friday, September 28, 2012

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has described as “deeply hurtful” allegations levelled against him by former IRA prisoner Dolours Price.

Ms Price claimed Mr Adams sanctioned the 1973 Old Bailey bombing, in which one man died and more than 200 people were injured, in an interview with last week’s Sunday Telegraph.

Mr Adams yesterday described as “untrue” and “false” Ms Price’s allegations.

“What she says is deeply hurtful to me and I’ve a family as well. They’re very, very serious allegations. These aren’t just trite across the floor of the chamber nonsense. These are deeply serious and hurtful comments that she has made.”

Asked why he did not attempt to take legal action against Ms Price, Mr Adams said: “Because I don’t have the money.”

He said it was reprehensible that the Taoiseach should use Ms Price’s allegation in response to an unrelated question from Sinn Féin’s deputy leader Mary-Lou McDonald about the row over the siting of primary care centres. “I think he diminishes his office,” he said.

Gerry Adams says he cannot afford to sue over allegations

Gerry Adams says he cannot afford to sue over allegations
He is coming under intensifying pressure to explain his personal involvement in Provo executions after further revelations of his role from a close ally.
National News
Irish Independent
Friday September 28 2012

SINN Fein President Gerry Adams has said he cannot afford to sue over the latest allegations of involvement in IRA executions as he refused to make a statement to the Dail, writes Michael Brennan.

He is coming under intensifying pressure to explain his personal involvement in Provo executions after further revelations of his role from a close ally.

Former IRA bomber Dolours Price described how Mr Adams ordered her to ferry captives, including Ms McConville, across the Border to be murdered.

The claims were raised in the Dail by Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Fine Gael backbencher Tom Barry called on him to make a statement, but Mr Adams said he he had no case to answer.

Adams says bombing claims false

Adams says bombing claims false
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has denied claims relating to the 1973 Old Bailey bombing
MARY MINIHAN
Irish Times
Thursday, September 27, 2012

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has described as “deeply hurtful” claims levelled against him by former IRA prisoner Dolours Price.

Ms Price has alleged he sanctioned the 1973 Old Bailey bombing in which one man died and more than 200 were injured in an interview with last week’s Sunday Telegraph.

Mr Adams today described the Ms Price’s allegations as “very, very serious” as well as “untrue” and “false”. Asked why he did not attempt to sue Ms Price, Mr Adams said: “Because I don’t have the money.”

The Louth TD said he would not make a statement to the Dáil because he had no case to answer. “I think it’s very disappointing . . . and it’s very disappointing that some sections of the media and other political parties repeat these claims as if they were fact,” he said.

Ms Price also purportedly told the Boston Tapes project she was implicated in the murder of mother of 10 Jean McConville when acting for her then alleged IRA commander Mr Adams – a charge the Sinn Féin leader denies.

However, journalist and author Ed Moloney has repeated his assertion that the McConville disappearance did not figure in the Belfast Project oral history archive at Boston College.

In a statement, Mr Moloney said: “So let me once again put the matter on record, with all the strength and force I can muster: Dolours Price did not mention Jean McConville nor talk about what had happened to her in her interviews for the Belfast Project at Boston College.”

In relation to the McConville case, Mr Adams said: “I’ve no case to answer. Let me say that what happened to Jean McConville was a grave injustice to her and to her family. The IRA has opened up on those issues, came forward on those issues, apologised for all of that.”