Gerry Adams arrest defended by Northern Ireland police chief
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Version 0 of 1. Northern Ireland's chief constable has defended his officers' decision to arrest and question Gerry Adams over the Sinn Féin president's alleged role in the kidnapping, killing and secret burial of Jean McConville. Matt Baggott said on Tuesday that it was both "unfair and inappropriate" for Adams and his supporters to claim there were "dark" elements opposed to the peace process behind his detention. The head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland said: "The arrest and questioning of Mr Adams was legitimate and lawful and an independent judge subsequently decided that there were grounds for further detention." Adams was arrested last Wednesday and held until Sunday night for questioning about his alleged role in one of the most notorious murders during the Troubles. McConville, 37, a Protestant-born Catholic convert, was dragged away in front of her children at their home in the Divis flats complex in west Belfast in 1972, driven across the border to the Irish Republic, shot in the head at a remote coastal spot in County Louth, and then buried in secret. She became the most famous of the "disappeared" – 16 IRA victims shot and buried at secret locations across Ireland during the Troubles. Baggott, who retires from the most challenging job in UK policing after the summer, said it had been wrong of Sinn Féin to question "the motivation or impartiality of police officers tasked with investigating serious crime in this very public, generalised and vague manner". The deputy first minister of Northern Ireland and Adams's closest colleague within Sinn Féin, Martin McGuinness, had spoken of "dark forces" within the police and even on Friday appeared to hint that the party would withdraw its support for policing while his leader remained in custody. After his release on Sunday evening, Adams attempted to defuse a potential political crisis by stating at a rally in west Belfast that he and his party still supported the PSNI. Peter Robinson, the first minister at Stormont, said earlier on Tuesday that he had been prepared to risk breaking up the power-sharing government in Belfast if Sinn Féin had removed its support for the PSNI. Sinn Féin's support for the police at the 2006 St Andrews agreement was one of the key foundation stones of the deal that led to the once unthinkable government that included the party and the Democratic Unionists the following year. The DUP leader said that in the absence of Sinn Féin's support for policing, his party would have put forward a motion to exclude the republican party from the Northern Ireland executive. "We would not be slow in bringing forward a motion for their exclusion," Robinson said. "Indeed, if Sinn Féin had not corrected their position, the motion would have gone down." Such a move would have triggered the collapse of the devolved administration because Sinn Féin – and possibly also the rival nationalist SDLP – would have been able to use a veto in the regional parliament to stop the exclusion motion. In turn this would have resulted in a breakup of the fragile power-sharing coalition between unionists and nationalists. However, the acrimony between Sinn Féin and the DUP has not dissipated. Robinson also questioned whether McGuinness had compromised his position because he said the code of office for the first and deputy first minister required their full support of the police and the judicial system in Northern Ireland. Relations between the two leaders of unionism and nationalism are currently described by sources at Stormont as "arctic". Meanwhile dissident republican sources have told the Guardian there is no threat to the lives of Adams or one of his chief lieutenants in the republican movement, Bobby Storey. The Sinn Feín leader revealed that the PSNI had informed him via his wife that there was a death threat from "criminal elements" against him and also directed at Storey. But sources close to the new IRA group said it was "not policy" to be targeting leading Sinn Féin figures and they understood that none of the other two hardline republican factions still at "war", the Continuity IRA or Oghlaigh na hEireann "had any interest in making martyrs" of their political opponents. |