BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — Former Irish Republican Army members and Sinn Fein party colleagues say Northern Ireland police are casting a wider net in their deepening efforts to prove that party leader Gerry Adams once commanded the outlawed IRA and ordered the 1972 killing of a Belfast mother of 10.
Details of an expanding trawl for evidence emerged Saturday as detectives spent a fourth day questioning Adams about the IRA’s abduction, killing and secret burial of Jean McConville. Adams had been scheduled to be charged or released by Friday night but a judge granted police a 48-hour extension of his detention. Adams, 65, took part in the court hearing via a video link from the police’s interrogation center west of Belfast.
Sinn Fein’s deputy leader, Martin McGuinness, said he had been informed by Adams’ legal team that detectives were questioning him about many of his speeches, writings and public appearances going back to the 1970s, when he was interned without trial as an IRA suspect and wrote a newspaper column from inside prison using the pen name Brownie.
Other aides to Adams and McGuinness said Catholic west Belfast residents with IRA affiliations had been approached by police recently, asking them to make statements about their knowledge of Adams’ IRA activities.
And 200 miles (320 kilometers) south in the Republic of Ireland, an IRA veteran who served 31 years in prison for murdering a policeman said he had a Northern Ireland detective knock on his door seeking a witness statement from him. Peter Rogers, 69, said he refused.
Last month Rogers told the BBC he met both Adams and McGuinness in Dublin in 1980 to discuss their plans to smuggle stolen mining explosives from the Irish Republic to England for use in the IRA’s bombing campaign on London. Rogers said Adams was annoyed because he had failed to deliver them by ferry across the Irish Sea.
Gerry wanted to know what the delay was, Rogers told the BBC. He said he told both Adams and McGuinness that the explosives had been badly stored and were too unstable to transport without the risk of an accidental explosion. He said Adams rejected his concerns.
Gerry said: ‘Look Peter, we can’t replace that explosive. You will have to go with what you have, and as soon as you can get it across, the better.’ … I was given a direct order, Rogers told the BBC.
Rogers, who in 1972 had escaped from a Royal Navy ship in Belfast used as a temporary prison to hold IRA suspects, was trying to move the explosives in October 1980 when two policemen stopped his van. He fatally shot one of the officers.
McGuinness has warned that Sinn Fein could reconsider its support for Northern Ireland’s police force — a key commitment that enabled Sinn Fein to form a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland with Protestant leaders — if Adams is charged with any crime.