By Peter Muhly
Northern Irish police have applied for more time to question republican leader Gerry Adams over a notorious IRA murder in 1972, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness says.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) could not immediately confirm the claim, but they must decide by Friday evening whether to charge the Sinn Fein president, release him or ask a judge for more time.
Adams, who played a leading role in the peace process in the troubled British province, has been in custody since he was arrested on Wednesday night over the killing of mother-of-10 Jean McConville.
He strongly denies any involvement in her murder, one of the most infamous in the three decades of sectarian conflict known as The Troubles, and his continued questioning is raising political tensions.
McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army paramilitary commander who now represents the IRA's political wing Sinn Fein in a power-sharing government in Belfast, repeated his assertion that the arrest was intended to damage his party ahead of local and European elections later this month.
"Yesterday I said that the timing of the arrest of Gerry Adams was politically motivated. And today's decision by the PSNI to seek an extension to his detention absolutely confirms that view," he told reporters on Friday.
Adams has reportedly been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000, which allows police to question suspects for up to seven days without charge provided a judge agrees.
While McGuinness expressed his support for the PSNI, he said there were sections "who continue to work to a negative, anti-peace process agenda and are involved in political policing".
British Prime Minister David Cameron called McGuinness on Thursday night to discuss the arrest of Adams, who has been the public face of the movement to end British sovereignty in Northern Ireland for the past 30 years.
Cameron also called Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson, leader of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who has backed the arrest of Adams as proof that "no one is above the law".
Catholic socialists Sinn Fein and the Protestant, conservative DUP share power in an arrangement established under the 1998 Good Friday peace accords, which largely brought an end to the violence in the province.
But sporadic attacks continue, blamed on dissident republicans opposed to the peace process, and political leaders are still grappling with the legacy of the past.
AFP
source: newshub archive
