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Northern Ireland police arrest Gerry Adams over 1972 murder

01 May 2014 21:16 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Northern Ireland police arrested Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams on Wednesday as part of an investigation into one of the province's most controversial murders, a move that sent political shockwaves through Belfast and Dublin, APA reports quoting Today's Zaman.

The man reviled in Britain as the spokesman for the Irish Republican Army in the 1980s, Adams reinvented himself as a Northern Ireland peacemaker and then as a populist opposition politician in the Irish parliament.

His Sinn Fein party said he was arrested by police investigating the 1972 abduction and murder of mother of 10 Jean McConville on Wednesday evening and could be held for up to 48 hours without being charged.

Adams, who has always denied membership of the IRA said he was "innocent of any part" in the killing, which he said was "wrong and a grievous injustice to her and her family."

"Well publicised, malicious allegations have been made against me. I reject these," he said in a statement.

Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary-Lou McDonald said the decision to make the arrest weeks before elections across Ireland, was influenced by demands from political rivals and "elements of the old guard" within the Northern Ireland police service.

"The timing as far as we are concerned is politically contrived," she said.