The family of a mother of 10 murdered by IRA terrorists today vowed to fight for a public inquiry after a judge ruled a recording said to be the defendant claiming Gerry Adams ‘advocated’ the victim’s killing and secret burial was ‘unreliable’.
Five of Jean McConville’s surviving children were at Belfast Crown Court as a jury of four women and eight men found 82-year-old Ivor Bell not guilty of encouraging her murder after the key prosecution evidence was ruled inadmissible.
In tapes from an oral history project, a man known as ‘Interviewee Z’ described how, in 1972, the IRA killed Mrs McConville and hid her body at the command of Gerry Adams – a claim the former Sinn Fein president has always denied.
The judge accepted there was ‘overwhelming’ evidence it was Mr Bell speaking, despite denials by the defence, but said the tapes could not be used as evidence because the interviewer had asked leading questions.
Speaking after the verdict, the McConville family said: ‘She was a loving, working class widowed mother doing her best to raise 10 children.
‘They murdered her because they could. We may not have got justice but we have got some truth. But this cannot finish here.
‘We need and demand a full public inquiry. We’ve heard Gerry Adams often call for inquiries. Will he support this one?’
Veteran republican Ivor Bell (pictured) was today found not guilty of soliciting the 1972 murder of mother-of-10 Jean McConville following a trial of the facts at Belfast Crown Court
Mrs McConville’s surviving children outside court today. They are, from left to right: Thomas, Archie, Michael, Susie and Jim
Mrs McConville with three of her children shortly before she was abducted by IRA terrorists in 1972
The trial heard allegations Gerry Adams recommended Mrs McConville’s secret burial. He is seen outside court on October 14
Mrs McConville’s murder, which saw her dragged from home by 12 masked IRA gunmen in front of her 10 children before being shot and buried near a beach, was one of the darkest events of the Troubles.
Mr Bell, of Belfast, had been charged with two counts of soliciting murder, but was found medically unfit to stand trial. Instead, a process called a ‘trial of the facts’ was started to determine whether there was truth to the charges.
The prosecution relied on the so-called Boston tapes, which were recorded at Boston College in Massachusetts and intended as an oral history of the Troubles and played to the jury.
They contained accounts from former IRA and loyalist UVF paramilitaries about their actions, including testimony from ‘Interviewee Z’, and were seized by the Police Service of Northern Ireland in 2014 after a trans-Atlantic court battle.
On the tapes, Z – which the prosecution maintained was Mr Bell – was asked if there was a ‘possibility’ allegations that Gerry Adams had called for Mrs McConville’s murder and disappearance were wrong.
Interviewee Z replied: ‘The only thing I have to say is this – Gerry would have just passed the information back to GHQ [IRA’s general headquarters] that one, she was a tout, two, she was taking money, three, she had to be executed. Right?
‘Whether he knew she had 10 kids or not, I don’t know.’
The judge at Mr Bell’s trial accepted there was ‘overwhelming evidence’ the voice on the tapes was the defendant, but ruled they were inadmissible as evidence because he had been asked leading questions.
The interviewer, former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntyre, was criticised in the trial as ‘biased’ and opposed to the peace process in which Sinn Fein and Mr Adams as its president played a key part.
The court heard that neither Mr McIntyre nor Belfast Project director Ed Moloney co-operated with police and they did not appear as witnesses at the trial of the facts.
Professor Kevin O’Neill of Boston College appeared as a witness for the defence at Belfast Crown Court and said he had raised concerns about the project.
He told the court the interviewer came from a ‘highly critical perspective on one side of the republican movement’, often starting questions with statements on his perspective.
‘I detected a strong bias against the Good Friday Agreement and those who support it,’ he said.
During the trial of the facts defence QC Barry MacDonald put to PSNI Detective Chief Inspector Peter Montgomery, who collected the tapes from the US, that Mr McIntyre was a ‘hardline dissident opposed to the peace process’ and ‘opposed particularly to Gerry Adams’.
Mr MacDonald described Mr McIntyre as a ‘man on a mission, a man with an agenda to discredit Gerry Adams and other architects of the peace process’.
Mr Montgomery responded: ‘If I believed he was working to an agenda, that would have been something I would have raised with the prosecution service.’
Mr MacDonald said the methods used in the Belfast Project ‘gave rise to accounts that were inherently unreliable and potentially completely untrue’, and Mr Montgomery responded: ‘They could do, yes.’
Former Sinn Fein president Mr Adams faced accusations around membership of the IRA and the murder of Mrs McConville when the contents of interviews with Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price become known.
Mr Adams has denied any involvement in the murder of Mrs McConville.
Giving evidence to the trial of the facts, he blasted the Belfast Project as ‘a most suspect project with no real scholarly, historical or even by any rules process of evaluating or bringing forward facts about our recent history’.
Criticising Mr McIntyre, Mr Adams said: ‘I notice he never came to me for an interview but seemed to have a propensity to go to people who were hostile to the direction we were going.’
While appearing at the trial, Mr Adams described the IRA ‘as a legitimate response’ to the British presence in Northern Ireland.
‘(IRA was) a legitimate response to British military occupation, to engage in armed actions, and thankfully we got to the situation where there is no rationale for that,’ he told Belfast Crown Court on Monday.
When asked about the IRA’s policy of murdering informers, he said: ‘I accepted that if people – I don’t like the word tout by the way – that if people were agents or informers, and this goes for me as well as anyone else, they were liable to be shot.
‘It’s regrettable, it’s not something I would advocate for.’
However Mr Adams criticised the secret burial of IRA victims, adding he did not have a ‘carte blanche’ for the IRA.
Judge Mr Justice O’Hara directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty having earlier ruled that the taped interviews were inadmissible.
‘As a result of some legal rulings which have been made over the last two days there is now no evidence that the prosecution can put before you to support the case it was putting against Mr Bell,’ he said.
‘My role now is to direct you to return a verdict of not guilty because you simply cannot find him to have done the acts alleged.’
Crucial tapes in which ‘Z’ spoke about McConville’s murder that judge ruled ‘inadmissible’
A number of former members of republican and loyalist groups took part in taped interviews as part of an oral history project by Boston College in Massachusetts on condition the contents would not be released until after their death.
A number of the tapes were seized by detectives from the Police Service of Northern Ireland investigating the 1972 murder and secret burial of Mrs McConville’s.
On the tapes, Z – which the prosecution maintained was Mr Bell – was asked if there was a ‘possibility’ allegations that Gerry Adams had called for Mrs McConville’s murder and disappearance were wrong.
Miss McConville’s body is removed from an area near Templetown beach in County Louth in 2003
Interviewee Z replied: ‘The only thing I have to say is this – Gerry would have just passed the information back to GHQ [IRA’s general headquarters] that one, she was a tout, two, she was taking money, three, she had to be executed. Right?
‘Whether he knew she had 10 kids or not, I don’t know.’
Interviewee Z was then asked about the practice of ‘disappearing’ informants by killing them and conducting secret burials.
He replied that this would have been a decision for the IRA HQ but the ‘Belfast Brigade’ would have ‘advocated’ it. Interviewee Z claimed Mr Adams was the IRA’s commanding officer in Belfast at the time – although he has always denied being in the group.
‘Z’ said: ‘He was the OC of Belfast. I was operations officer. Pat [McClure] was the IO [intelligence officer]. Pat handled it and directly tied in with Gerry.
‘The first I knew about that woman was [when] I was told she was being shot as a tout and the reason for it was she was an informer.
‘They told me about radios, signals and pulling the curtains up and down.
‘I said: ‘I don’t know anything about anything, other than we did not have jails so we should shoot touts.’
‘The people who came to me was Pat and Gerry.’
The interviewer, former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntyre, then asks about Mr Adam’s attitude towards Mrs McConville.
‘Just that she was a tout and she should be shot,’ he replied.
‘I wouldn’t say he would have liked it very much.’
Describing his own attitude towards informers, ‘Z’ said: ‘At the end of the day, she’s an informer. Worse than that, she’s an informer for money.
‘Whatever is decided, I will back that up. I said: ‘I don’t have a problem with shooting touts.’
‘But they said: ‘We are going to bury her.’
‘I said I didn’t agree with that… If that’s done, it’s done without my agreement. It defeats the entire purpose.’
He later added: ‘I said: ‘If she’s a tout, the fact that she’s a woman shouldn’t save her.’
‘I wasn’t told she had 10 kids and no husband.
‘I can’t say for sure that I would have said: ‘No, don’t shoot her.’
‘But I may have had second thoughts.’
Z also alleged Mr Adams asked a priest to smuggle Mrs McConville out of Belfast.
Following the Crown Court ruling, the McConville family said they are ‘bitterly disappointed’.
In a statement they said: ‘We are bitterly disappointed that [the tape of the interview with Z] cannot be used in evidence in this case.
‘But whatever happens (with) the legal technicalities, everyone in the court this week heard how the abduction, murder and disappearance of our mother 47 years ago was planned and who was behind it. They always knew it and now so does the rest of the world.
Archie, one of Mrs McConville’s sons, outside Belfast Crown Court today
‘For 20 years the IRA denied they had anything to do with murder and disappearance and they only admitted it when it suited them.
‘She was not an informer and Gerry Adams has confirmed in court that he didn’t believe that she was.’
Ivor Bell’s solicitor Peter Corrigan said: ‘The Boston Tapes were of no benefit from a historical perspective, never mind meeting the threshold of evidence in a criminal trial.
‘The process from start to finish was fatally flawed, which lacked the relevant safeguards, and is described by one expert during the course of this trial as ‘exactly not how to conduct an oral history project’.’
Northern Ireland’s Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Michael Agnew, said there is no mechanism to launch an appeal against the not guilty finding in the Bell case.
‘The prosecution team considered carefully whether there was a right of appeal to this judgment.
‘However, given that Mr Bell had been found unfit to stand trial, and the hearing in which the ruling was made was a trial of the facts rather than a criminal trial, it was concluded that there is no mechanism for any appeal.’
Dragged away in front of her 10 children and shot: How Jean McConville’s murder became one of the most notorious unsolved killings of the Troubles
Jean McConville’s ten children watched in horror as a gang of masked IRA terrorists smashed down the door of his family’s West Belfast home and demanded to see their mother.
They dragged her through the door as her children clung on to her legs and tried to fight the gunmen off. It was the last time they saw their mother alive.
A week later, a man who identified himself as being from the IRA called at the McConvilles’ council home. He handed the children their mother’s purse and wedding ring, saying: ‘I was told to deliver this.’
Unbeknown to her ten children, Jean McConville had been taken to a beach with her hands tied behind her back and shot through the back of her head.
Irish Police guard the scene where human remains were found near Templetown Beach
Since then Michael and his other siblings have lived in the hope that one day the murders would be brought to justice.
Then in 2003 her remains were accidentally discovered at a beach in County Louth. Tests showed she had been shot in the back of the head.
Jean McConville was abducted from her council flat off the Catholic Falls Road in 1972 when neighbours informed IRA leaders she was a British sympathiser after she was seen comforting a soldier shot and wounded outside her home.
Soon after her act of kindness to the soldier, Mrs McConville was beaten and found wandering the streets dazed and bleeding.
Her children, then aged from six to 16, helped clean up her wounds at home. But they did not have time to heal.
Less than 24 hours later, more than a dozen figures, some wearing balaclavas, arrived at the McConville family home and burst through the door demanding to see their ‘mammy’.
She became one of the so-called ‘Disappeared’, of whom there were at least 16 IRA murder victims who had been buried at secret locations.
No one has yet been prosecuted for her murder.
The prosecution offered no more evidence against the defendant and the jury was directed to find him guilty, Mr Agnew said.
‘This case presented the PPS with a number of novel and complex legal and evidential issues. Whilst we respect the ruling of the judge, we remain satisfied the proceedings were properly brought.
‘The decisions taken in this case were fully in accordance with the Test for Prosecution which requires the PPS to proceed with those cases in which it is considered there is a reasonable prospect of conviction (or of a finding that a defendant unfit to be tried did the act charged against him) and in which prosecution is in the public interest.
‘The PPS would like to sincerely thank the family of Mrs Jean McConville for the positive and dignified way in which they have engaged with us throughout what was no doubt a distressing time for them.’
Who is Ivor Bell? Veteran Republican and IRA member who once met Willie Whitelaw for talks
Ivor Bell is a veteran republican who joined the Provisional IRA after it was formed in the early 1970s.
In 1972, he was part of a republican delegation, along with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who were flown to England for secret ceasefire talks with then Northern Ireland secretary William [Willie] Whitelaw.
Three years later he was convicted for trying to help Mr Adams attempt to escape from prison in 1974.
Mr Bell was a member of the IRA but turned away from the republican movement in the 1980s when it began to focus on peaceful politics
In 1983 Mr Bell was charged with membership of the IRA and other terror offences following claims by supergrass Robert Lean.
However he walked free after Mr Lean withdrew his evidence.
Mr Bell turned away from the republican movement in the late 1980s during a period when it was focusing more of its efforts on Sinn Fein and politics.
In 2014, he was arrested after the Police Service of Northern Ireland seized a number of taped interviews carried out as part of the Boston College Belfast Project.
He was accused of being interviewee Z and was charged with soliciting the murder of mother of 10 Jean McConville.
However he was found unfit to stand trial in November last year and a trial of the facts was ordered.
A trial of the facts aims to determine the truth of allegations against a defendant. It cannot result in a conviction but if the court is not satisfied that the accused committed the acts alleged, then he will be acquitted.
Mr Bell, who is 82, was excused from attending proceedings at Belfast Crown Court over the past two weeks due to health problems.
The trial was the subject of blanket reporting restrictions which were lifted on Thursday following a challenge from a number of media organisations including the PA news agency.
On Thursday, Mr Justice O’Hara directed a jury to find Mr Bell not guilty after ruling on Wednesday that the Boston College tapes were unreliable and could not be used as evidence against him.