The Killing of Jean McConville - Justified or Not?

@Bandage ?

SF says he is ‘meeting’ with the PSNI

BBC says he was ‘arrested’… http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-27232731

PSNI also say he was arrested. I hope he’s more truthful under questioning.

Some shambles of a peace process where they’re still pursuing this case. No possible good can come from this.

Does this look like a guilty man to you?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bmf6QSvIAAAxxrr.jpg

[ATTACH=full]1221[/ATTACH]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YllyBr_4Kxk

They could probably have found a more recent photo of Gerry if they did a google images search.

Hard to argue an investigation should cease for political convenience though, particularly in an environment when multiple other incidents from the past (Bloody Sunday, Garda collusion etc) are correctly being investigated and Sinn Fein are correctly campaigning for the investigation of others (Finucane).

Anyway, he has nothing to worry about surely - sure he was never in the IRA …

[QUOTE=“tallback, post: 939131, member: 1158”]

Anyway, he has nothing to worry about surely - sure he was never in the IRA …[/QUOTE]
:rolleyes:

“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.”

“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.”[/QUOTE]

As I said - nothing to worry about so.

[QUOTE=“Rocko, post: 939087, member: 1”]Does this look like a guilty man to you?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bmf6QSvIAAAxxrr.jpg[/QUOTE]

Yes.

[QUOTE=“tallback, post: 939131, member: 1158”]Hard to argue an investigation should cease for political convenience though, particularly in an environment when multiple other incidents from the past (Bloody Sunday, Garda collusion etc) are correctly being investigated and Sinn Fein are correctly campaigning for the investigation of others (Finucane).

Anyway, he has nothing to worry about surely - sure he was never in the IRA …[/QUOTE]

I don’t think it’s political convenience. It’s directly related to core elements of the Haas negotiations.

I think there’s a difference between inquiry or investigative commissions and prosecutions. As bitter a pill as it is to swallow I don’t think there will be progress to further improvements in six county society without moving on from tit for tat prosecutions. On everything.

Not long ago people on here were calling Adams a liar for denying he was in the IRA. In the current (ie last 40 years and including today) political climate he would likely be prosecuted for this or for some associated act or implied responsibility, not to mention civil cases. The idea of freedom being restricted to those who have served time is an odd solution to the problem.

Fairly messy alright. As you said it’s an odd situation that those who were convicted are free men but shadows of the past hang over a lot of others.

It only really ends when that generation retire from the various parties and organisations.

[QUOTE=“tallback, post: 939156, member: 1158”]Fairly messy alright. As you said it’s an odd situation that those who were convicted are free men but shadows of the past hang over a lot of others.

It only really ends when that generation retire from the various parties and organisations.[/QUOTE]
Must have been something similar with the civil war generation

Fairly pathetic seeing the gleeful tweets from Labour candidates today. Same people who have never commented on anything else to happen in the 6 counties but they’re treating this as some righteous justice for the McConville family. It’s strange what hypocrisies people feel compelled to embrace when political rivalry takes hold.

True but likewise Adams lecturing in the Dail about morality is hard to stomach. Any politician will always do what they can to gain an advantage.

Solution has to be an amnesty on all sides but that means SF dropping calls for Finucane inquiry/Bloody Sunday prosecutions

Comes a point where peace means having to accept there won’t be justice. Adams being tried for murder now could swing the whole place back to violence if there is not a quid pro quo prosecution of armed forces over an British atrocity or two and even then Adams on trial for murder of Jean McConville is dangerous for peace process.

Reminder for SF in the ROI that they need to ditch the “whiff of sulphur” lads to have any chance of winning a General Election.

Who are the gleeful tweeters?

If if happened to your mother and your family was broken up and put into social services it would be hard to “get over it” but at this stage I don’t think anything is gained by convicting one man who may have ordered the execution

Details are harrowing though

It is almost 38 years ago to the day that a gang of masked IRA men and women in West Belfast burst through Jean McConville’s door. Jean had been recently widowed and was alone in the house, along with seven of her 10 children. “They came into the house and told my mother to put on her coat,” her son Archie, who was 16 then, recalled at the inquest many years later. “We were all in a panic and the children were squealing everywhere. We were afraid of what they were going to do to our mother.”

They waited all night for her return. And the next. Helen, who was 15, tried to look after the younger children, which included her six-year-old twin brothers. There was no word the first week, nor the second. Finally, after three weeks, the now hungry and terrified family were visited by a stranger who gave them Jean’s purse – with 52p still inside it – and her three rings.

Two months after Jean’s disappearance, the family were split up by social services and sent down into the bowels of the system. These children, who had all witnessed their mother’s abduction, were told again and again that she had deserted them.

So what really happened to Jean McConville? Even now, three decades later, there are so many lies and gaps surrounding her story that the picture remains unclear. Her children are unsure about certain details, though not in the important one: “We just waited and waited from that night, for years and years.”
This is what we do know. Jean was originally a Protestant from East Belfast who converted to Catholicism when she married Arthur McConville. The couple suffered sectarian persecution by both communities and they were forced to move around until they ended up in the Falls Road. Jean’s ambiguous status in West Belfast turned ugly after Arthur’s death from cancer in 1971. Her fate was sealed when neighbours allegedly saw her give aid to a wounded British soldier. The bereaved family had only been in their new flat for a week when she was taken away, the day after being beaten up in a bingo hall.

We also now know that she was interrogated and tortured after the abduction; she was beaten with such force that her bones cracked and her hands were mutilated. The actual cause of death was a single shot to the back of the head. Jean was then taken across the border and secretly buried on Shelling Beach in County Louth. For over 27 years, the IRA maintained that it had no connection with her disappearance.

We also now know what happened next in the great catalogue of crimes committed against Jean McConville. Despite receiving two notifications of her abduction, the RUC failed even to record the complaint. CID inquiries in that area of Belfast, it was later explained, “were restricted to the most serious cases” in those days. Not only was nothing done to locate Jean, but the RUC refused to accept that she missing, preferring, instead, to believe the word of an anonymous tip-off that she had absconded with a British soldier.

[QUOTE=“TheUlteriorMotive, post: 939268, member: 2272”]True but likewise Adams lecturing in the Dail about morality is hard to stomach. Any politician will always do what they can to gain an advantage.

Solution has to be an amnesty on all sides but that means SF dropping calls for Finucane inquiry/Bloody Sunday prosecutions

Comes a point where peace means having to accept there won’t be justice. Adams being tried for murder now could swing the whole place back to violence if there is not a quid pro quo prosecution of armed forces over an British atrocity or two and even then Adams on trial for murder of Jean McConville is dangerous for peace process.

Reminder for SF in the ROI that they need to ditch the “whiff of sulphur” lads to have any chance of winning a General Election.[/QUOTE]
He will not be prosecuted for this. This is a political act-interesting to find out where this is coming from. These arrests of late all stem from the Boston College tapes and testimony of people who are now dead. They must have new evidence or somebody else must have come forward about this.