Gerry Adams "had Jean McConville disappeared"

Started by Minder, March 28, 2010, 02:38:26 PM

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Minder

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article7078981.ece


Brendan "darkie" Hughes, a former commander of the IRA in Belfast, has claimed posthumously that Gerry Adams ordered the killing and burial of Jean McConville, the mother-of-10 shot dead by the IRA in 1972. He also suggested that Adams gave the order for the Provisional IRA to hang one of its own members in Long Kesh in June 1973 after the 22-year-old cracked under police questioning.

Hughes also boasted that he personally ran a personation campaign for Adams's election as MP in west Belfast in 1987, and again in the council elections of 1989, stealing a "massive" number of votes.

The claims were made in a series of interviews Hughes gave to a researcher for Boston College in 2001 and 2002. He agreed to speak on condition that the material would not be published until after his death.

"I find it so difficult to come to terms [with] the fact that this man has turned his back on everything that we ever did," Hughes said in an interview before he died in 2008.


"I never carried out a major [IRA] operation without the okay or the order from Gerry [Adams]. And for him to sit in his plush office in Westminster or Stormont or wherever and deny it, I mean it's like Hitler denying that there was ever a Holocaust."

Hughes's interviews are contained in a new book, Voices From The Grave by journalist Ed Moloney, which is serialised exclusively in today's Sunday Times.

Adams, the Sinn Fein president, has denied any involvement in the killing of McConville and being a member of the IRA. Asked last month if he was aware that the widowed Belfast woman was to be murdered and her body dumped, he said "No".

Hughes revealed that he was deeply involved in the affair, one of the most high-profile killings of the Troubles. He said his unit found an army transmitter in McConville's flat in Divis. Her family insists that the widow was not an informer, and that she was shot for going to the assistance of an injured soldier.

"She was an informer; she had a transmitter in her house. The British supplied the transmitter [to watch] the movements of IRA volunteers around Divis Flats at that time," Hughes said. "I sent a squad over to the house to check it out and there was a transmitter. We retrieved [it], arrested her, took her away, interrogated her, and she told [us] what she was doing."

Hughes said he wasn't "on the scene at the time", but insisted that his unit took possession of the transmitter and, because she was a woman, released McConville with a warning. He claimed that within a few weeks another army transmitter had been put in McConville's flat.

"She was still co-operating with the British . . . getting paid by the British to pass on information. The squad was brought into operation then," he said. "And she was arrested again and taken away."

Hughes said he knew McConville was to be "executed" but didn't know whether she was to be "disappeared" or her body left on the street. He claimed Ivor Bell, another IRA leader, argued for the body to be dumped in public, but was over-ruled.

"There was only one man who gave the order for that woman to be executed," he said. "That man is now the head of Sinn Fein. I did not give the order to execute that woman — he did. And yet he went to see [McConville's] kids to promise an investigation into her death.

"[Bell] argued, 'if you are going to kill her, put her on the street. What's the sense of killing her and burying her if no-one knows what she was killed for?' "

Asked if Adams had rejected this logic, Hughes replied: "He rejected it." And ordered her to be disappeared, the interviewer asked. "To be buried. She was an informer."

Hughes accused the Sinn Fein leader of getting into a position where he had to deny all of his IRA past. "It . . . appears that way
"When it's too tough for them, it's just right for us"

Minder

"When it's too tough for them, it's just right for us"

pintsofguinness

Which one of you bitches wants to dance?

ardmhachaabu

Quote from: pintsofguinness on March 28, 2010, 02:57:42 PM
you wouldn't know what to believe.
I dunno pints.

This bit resonated with me as I know some people who have been ostracised from the Shinners because they dared to question the direction the party was going in

QuoteHughes ended up deeply disillusioned, believing that the Provisional IRA was not led by its rank and file. "This is a movement led by the nose by a leadership that refuses to let go, and anyone who objects to it, anyone who has an alternative, is either ridiculed, degraded, shot or put out of the game altogether."
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something

pintsofguinness

Oh same here ard
Quote
This is a movement led by the nose by a leadership that refuses to let go, and anyone who objects to it, anyone who has an alternative, is either ridiculed, degraded, shot or put out of the game altogether."
I know that part is true especially in recent years.

I would just question Hughes motives and it would make me wary or anything he says.

Which one of you bitches wants to dance?

deiseach


ardmhachaabu

Quote from: pintsofguinness on March 28, 2010, 03:13:24 PM
Oh same here ard
Quote
This is a movement led by the nose by a leadership that refuses to let go, and anyone who objects to it, anyone who has an alternative, is either ridiculed, degraded, shot or put out of the game altogether."
I know that part is true especially in recent years.

I would just question Hughes motives and it would make me wary or anything he says.
I don't see why he would lie to be honest
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something

Minder

I would imagine the SF strategy will now be to try and discredit Hughes at every turn.
"When it's too tough for them, it's just right for us"

stew

Quote from: ardmhachaabu on March 28, 2010, 03:36:42 PM
Quote from: pintsofguinness on March 28, 2010, 03:13:24 PM
Oh same here ard
Quote
This is a movement led by the nose by a leadership that refuses to let go, and anyone who objects to it, anyone who has an alternative, is either ridiculed, degraded, shot or put out of the game altogether."
I know that part is true especially in recent years.

I would just question Hughes motives and it would make me wary or anything he says.
I don't see why he would lie to be honest

Lets see, hmmm, he was a murdering sc**bag and he had plenty of motive to lie, thats a good reason in my book for him to fabricate.

I would say that adams was smarter than that, no way he would leave himself exposed like this, especially since he knew there were informers all over the shop.

I also note that nothing was to be published until his death, nothing like putting the boot in on the way out the door.
Armagh, the one true love of a mans life.

pintsofguinness

ard, because he didn't agree with the way adams and co were taking the movement and wants to do them harm? (though I don't think anything disclosed so far will harm him)

I get it hard to understand why he couldn't understand Adams reasons for not disclosing everything he ever done especially when he's only done it himself when he's dead.
Which one of you bitches wants to dance?

Myles Na G.

Quote from: pintsofguinness on March 28, 2010, 03:47:00 PM
ard, because he didn't agree with the way adams and co were taking the movement and wants to do them harm? (though I don't think anything disclosed so far will harm him)

I get it hard to understand why he couldn't understand Adams reasons for not disclosing everything he ever done especially when he's only done it himself when he's dead.
Adams has consistently denied being in the IRA. That's not refusing to disclose 'everything he ever done'. That's denying everything he ever was, while at the same time insulting the intelligence of anyone within earshot.

pintsofguinness

Quote from: Myles Na G. on March 28, 2010, 04:12:39 PM
Quote from: pintsofguinness on March 28, 2010, 03:47:00 PM
ard, because he didn't agree with the way adams and co were taking the movement and wants to do them harm? (though I don't think anything disclosed so far will harm him)

I get it hard to understand why he couldn't understand Adams reasons for not disclosing everything he ever done especially when he's only done it himself when he's dead.
Adams has consistently denied being in the IRA. That's not refusing to disclose 'everything he ever done'. That's denying everything he ever was, while at the same time insulting the intelligence of anyone within earshot.
fine, change my "disclosing everything he ever done" to "disclosing he was in the IRA"...same point.
Which one of you bitches wants to dance?

dodgy umpire

The reality is that we will probably never know the full truth surrounding any of this
The Boys in Red and Black are back

Myles Na G.

Quote from: pintsofguinness on March 28, 2010, 04:13:57 PM
Quote from: Myles Na G. on March 28, 2010, 04:12:39 PM
Quote from: pintsofguinness on March 28, 2010, 03:47:00 PM
ard, because he didn't agree with the way adams and co were taking the movement and wants to do them harm? (though I don't think anything disclosed so far will harm him)

I get it hard to understand why he couldn't understand Adams reasons for not disclosing everything he ever done especially when he's only done it himself when he's dead.
Adams has consistently denied being in the IRA. That's not refusing to disclose 'everything he ever done'. That's denying everything he ever was, while at the same time insulting the intelligence of anyone within earshot.
fine, change my "disclosing everything he ever done" to "disclosing he was in the IRA"...same point.
Not really. If it's okay for Martin McGuinness, Gerry Kelly, and a whole cadre of other Shinners to admit they were in the IRA, why not Adams?

dodgy umpire

Quote from: Myles Na G. on March 28, 2010, 04:54:32 PM
Quote from: pintsofguinness on March 28, 2010, 04:13:57 PM
Quote from: Myles Na G. on March 28, 2010, 04:12:39 PM
Quote from: pintsofguinness on March 28, 2010, 03:47:00 PM
ard, because he didn't agree with the way adams and co were taking the movement and wants to do them harm? (though I don't think anything disclosed so far will harm him)

I get it hard to understand why he couldn't understand Adams reasons for not disclosing everything he ever done especially when he's only done it himself when he's dead.
Adams has consistently denied being in the IRA. That's not refusing to disclose 'everything he ever done'. That's denying everything he ever was, while at the same time insulting the intelligence of anyone within earshot.
fine, change my "disclosing everything he ever done" to "disclosing he was in the IRA"...same point.
Not really. If it's okay for Martin McGuinness, Gerry Kelly, and a whole cadre of other Shinners to admit they were in the IRA, why not Adams?

Either he wasn't in the IRA  or he has denied it for so long that he couldn't admit it now
The Boys in Red and Black are back