Title: Well, Good Deal!; Murdering Terrorist Gerry Adams Now In Stir! Post by: LostDutchman on May 01, 2014, 04:02:40 AM It is long past time!
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/04/30/sinn-fein-leader-gerry-adams-arrested-over-172-ira-killing/?intcmp=latestnews "BELFAST, Northern Ireland – Sinn Fein chief Gerry Adams, the warlord-turned-peacemaker of the Northern Ireland conflict, was being interrogated Thursday over the grisly slaying of a Belfast widow that has haunted his political career for decades. Adams was arrested on suspicion of ordering the killing of Jean McConville, a mother of 10 in his Catholic west Belfast power base in 1972. That was the deadliest year in four decades of bloodshed, when the outlawed Irish Republican Army was committing killings daily -- and Adams was already a commanding figure. The IRA branded the 38-year-old woman a British spy but killed her secretly and told her children, who ranged in age from infants to teens, that she had abandoned them. If Adams, 65, is charged with the murder of McConville -- who disappeared without trace until her bullet-shattered skull was found near a Republic of Ireland beach in 2003 -- it would be a profound surprise and deal a damaging shock to Northern Ireland's precariously balanced peace. Adams' track record suggests he won't be. He was arrested and interrogated repeatedly in the wake of IRA bombings and shootings in the 1970s and 1980s, and even met British government leaders face to face as an IRA representative for failed cease-fire talks in 1972, followed by the IRA's biggest car-bomb offensive on Belfast. Yet he insists he's never held any position in the underground army and has been convicted of only one IRA offense, a failed escape when imprisoned without trial. Adams gave every impression he intended to walk free again, giving TV interviews shortly before delivering himself to a Belfast police station Wednesday to begin an interrogation he has anticipated for months, if not years. "I believe that the killing of Jean McConville and the secret burial of her body was wrong and a grievous injustice to her and her family," Adams said. "Well publicized, malicious allegations have been made against me. I reject these. 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." The difference, this time, is that key potential witnesses against Adams have been speaking, on tape, from their graves. Police investigating the long-unsolved killing of McConville have been making arrests based on tapes of interviews with IRA veterans that they obtained, after a two-year U.S. legal fight, from Boston College. Its Belfast Project involved the collection of audio interviews with 26 IRA veterans detailing their own and colleagues' careers. They spoke on condition their words be kept secret until their deaths. Detectives sought access to all of the tapes after one of the interviewees, Adams' one-time IRA confidante Brendan Hughes, died in 2008. His Boston College interview became the subject of a 2010 book, "Voices From the Grave," by project coordinator and IRA expert Ed Moloney. Hughes said he led the IRA team that "arrested" McConville, but her fate was sealed following a policy argument between Adams and the man who succeeded him as the IRA's Belfast commander, Ivor Bell. He said Bell wanted McConville's body to be put on public display to intimidate others who might consider helping the British, but Adams wanted her killing kept a mystery, and she was buried in an unmarked grave. "There was only one man who gave the order for that woman to be executed," Hughes said in the audio recording, which was broadcast on British and Irish television in 2010. "That man is now the head of Sinn Fein. I did not give the order to execute that woman. He did." Adams and Hughes were arrested together in July 1973, when the British army pounced on an IRA commanders' meeting in West Belfast. Both were interned without trial, the British policy at the time; IRA members did not face criminal trials until 1976. After a protracted legal wrangle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, the Northern Ireland police last year received many more of the IRA tapes from Boston College. Last month, they used the taped interviews of Bell to arrest the now 77-year-old and charge him with aiding McConville's killing. Adams, sensing his own arrest was imminent, announced he would be happy to answer police questions and his lawyers negotiated Wednesday's police appearance. Moloney argues that the police investigation is designed not to bring justice but to claim the political scalp of Adams, who is Europe's longest-serving party leader. He has led Sinn Fein since 1983 and used its growing popularity and clout to deliver IRA cease-fires in 1994 and 1997 and, eventually, a formal renunciation of violence and disarmament in 2005. Today Sinn Fein is the main Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland, where Adams has taken a back seat to fellow IRA veteran Martin McGuinness. Since 2011, Adams has led Sinn Fein's lawmakers in the Republic of Ireland parliament. Moloney, author of the definitive "A Secret History of the IRA," said in a phone interview that he doubted the taped accounts could be used effectively to prove any criminal charge, but the political damage to Adams would still be done when, as is expected, McConville's children sue him for civil damages. "Unless Gerry Adams actually breaks down and confesses and says `I did it,' I think it's very unlikely they'll be able to charge him," Moloney said. Even if Adams were convicted of murder, he would win speedy parole under terms of the Good Friday peace accord. It offered quick freedom for all those convicted of pre-1998 IRA crimes. Yet Adams' murky IRA past has been repeatedly cited by Irish political opponents to undercut his message and credibility. He suffered embarrassment when two of his close colleagues, party mandarin Denis Donaldson and IRA internal security enforcer Freddie Scappaticci, were exposed as British double agents. Worse followed last year when his brother was convicted of raping his daughter in the 1970s and 1980s, and Adams testified that he had known of the crimes since 1987 but did not tell Belfast police because they were his enemies. Long before Wednesday's arrest, some within his party have wondered when he would give way to a successor with no IRA pedigree, so that the party could grow stronger in the Irish Republic. Moloney said Adams' arrest and future threats of lawsuits would "strengthen the argument inside Sinn Fein that it's time for people to retire and move on. There are too many of these ghosts from the past that keep haunting them." Others more concerned with maintaining stability in Northern Ireland warn that Sinn Fein must retain its reformed warlords in the leadership, lest room be created for a new generation of IRA die-hards to resume full-fledged violence against the British state. The wild card in any prosecutions could be Bell, who had a bitter split with Adams in the mid-1980s, when Adams steered the party toward seeking and taking seats in the Irish parliament, a first step toward wider acceptance of political compromise. Bell was expelled from the IRA and joined those who criticized Adams' acceptance of a 1998 peace deal that won prison paroles for hundreds of IRA convicts but kept Northern Ireland firmly within the United Kingdom. Bell's taped confessions, if accepted as admissible evidence, could be used against Adams because Bell is still alive. Those of Hughes and another IRA veteran who died in 2013, Dolours Price, might be harder to use because they cannot be cross-examined. Before she died, Price told journalists she had driven the car that delivered McConville to her death. She said another IRA member ordered her to kneel and fired a single rifle shot through the back of her head. She recalled attending a meeting with Hughes, Adams and Bell to discuss how to handle McConville and others suspected of passing intelligence tips on IRA movements to the British Army. Reflecting the embarrassment associated with killing a widowed mother, the IRA did not claim her killing until 1999, when it admitted responsibility for nine slayings of long-vanished civilians and IRA members, all branded informers. The IRA offered to try to pinpoint their unmarked graves, though with little success. An independent investigation by Northern Ireland's police complaints watchdog in 2006 found no evidence that McConville had been a spy. McConville's children, who had been divided into different foster homes and grew up barely knowing each other, took turns keeping a vigil during months of digging at a beach specified by the IRA some 55 miles south of Belfast, but nothing was found. Finally in 2003, a dogwalker stumbled across her remains protruding from the ground on a grassy slope above the shifting sands." Title: Re: Well, Good Deal!; Murdering Terrorist Gerry Adams Now In Stir! Post by: bryant.coleman on May 01, 2014, 07:10:06 AM I don't sympathize with Gerry Adams. He should be punished, if found guilty. But as far as I know, Margaret Thatcher and her army killed many more civilians than the Irish Republican Army ever managed. Both should be punished.
Title: Re: Well, Good Deal!; Murdering Terrorist Gerry Adams Now In Stir! Post by: Dogtanian on May 01, 2014, 02:23:28 PM He's a terrorist and it's about time he got his comeuppence!
Title: Re: Well, Good Deal!; Murdering Terrorist Gerry Adams Now In Stir! Post by: murraypaul on May 01, 2014, 02:30:32 PM I don't sympathize with Gerry Adams. He should be punished, if found guilty. But as far as I know, Margaret Thatcher and her army killed many more civilians than the Irish Republican Army ever managed. Both should be punished. Wrong, by a large margin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles#Casualties Quote Casualties[edit] Between 1969 and 2001, 3,526 people were killed as a result of the conflict.[139] In The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland, Brendan O'Leary and John McGarry point out that "nearly two per cent of the population of Northern Ireland have been killed or injured though political violence [...] If the equivalent ratio of victims to population had been produced in Great Britain in the same period some 100,000 people would have died, and if a similar level of political violence had taken place, the number of fatalities in the USA would have been over 500,000, or about ten times the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War."[140] In 2010 it was estimated that 107,000 people in Northern Ireland suffered some physical injury as a result of the conflict. On the basis of data gathered by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, the Victims Commission estimated that the conflict resulted in 500,000 'victims' in Northern Ireland alone. It defines 'victims' are those who are directly affected by 'bereavement', 'physical injury' or 'trauma' as a result of the conflict.[141] Responsibility Approximately 60% of the dead were killed by republicans, 30% by loyalists and 10% by British security forces. Responsibility for killing[142] Responsible party No. Republican paramilitary groups 2057 Loyalist paramilitary groups 1019 British security forces 363 Persons unknown 82 Irish security forces 5 Total 3526 According to Malcolm Sutton's Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland:[143] Of those killed by British security forces: 187 (~51.5%) were civilians 145 (~39.9%) were members of republican paramilitaries 18 (~4.9%) were members of loyalist paramilitaries 13 (~3.5%) were fellow members of the British security forces Of those killed by republican paramilitaries: 1080 (~52%) were members of the British security forces 728 (~35%) were civilians 187 (~9%) were members of republican paramilitaries 56 (~2.7%) were members of loyalist paramilitaries 10 (~0.4%) were members of the Irish security forces Of those killed by loyalist paramilitaries: 868 (~85.4%) were civilians 93 (~9%) were members of loyalist paramilitaries 41 (~4%) were members of republican paramilitaries 14 (~1.3%) were members of the British security forces Title: Re: Well, Good Deal!; Murdering Terrorist Gerry Adams Now In Stir! Post by: bryant.coleman on May 01, 2014, 02:53:47 PM ^^^ OK... even from these sources:
728 civilians killed by Republicans 1,055 civilians killed by Loyalists Title: Re: Well, Good Deal!; Murdering Terrorist Gerry Adams Now In Stir! Post by: hilariousandco on May 01, 2014, 02:56:20 PM I'm surprised he's evaded jail or being murdered this long to be honest.
Anyone else as a kid think Gerry Adams was actually called Sinn Fein? Pretty much every kid I knew thought the same. I often have a laugh about it. Title: Re: Well, Good Deal!; Murdering Terrorist Gerry Adams Now In Stir! Post by: murraypaul on May 01, 2014, 02:58:28 PM ^^^ OK... even from these sources: 728 civilians killed by Republicans 1,055 civilians killed by Loyalists 187 killed by British security forces 728 killed by terrorists in group A 1055 killed by terrorists in group B Lets not give them the dignity of calling them 'loyalists', as though they are deserving of praise. Terrorists are terrorists. The 'Troubles' devolved largely into large-scale gang warfare to protect criminal profits, will little concern for noble political goals. |