Gerry Adams
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has spent a third night in police custody.
The 65-year-old Co Louth TD has been in custody since he attended Antrim Police Station by prior appointment on Wednesday evening.
Mr Adams is being questioned by officers investigating the abduction and murder of Jean McConville.
Mrs McConville was dragged from her children in the Divis flats in west Belfast by a gang of up to 12 men and women in 1972.
She was interrogated, shot in the back of the head and then secretly buried. She became one of the “Disappeared” victims of the Troubles.
Her body was not found until 2003, on a beach in north Louth, 80km from her home.
Following an application before a judge last night, the PSNI was granted an additional 48 hours to question Mr Adams, who denies any involvement in the killing of the mother-of-ten.
Mr Adams’s party colleague and Stormont Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has claimed a “cabal” within the PSNI was behind the arrest, with the intent of damaging the peace process and inflicting political scars on Sinn Féin in the month of an election.
Mr McGuinness indicated that Sinn Féin would review its support for policing in Northern Ireland if Mr Adams is charged by detectives investigating the murder of Mrs McConville.
The deputy first minister said he and colleagues would not be making a “knee-jerk” decision, but suggested they would “reflect” on their endorsement of the PSNI if such a situation came to pass.
The British Prime Minister has urged the leaders of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government to co-operate after the arrest prompted sharp divisions between them.
David Cameron spoke to DUP First Minister Peter Robinson and Mr McGuinness, amid heightened republican anger at the timing of the Mr Adams’s detention.
Mr McGuinness has acknowledged that Mrs McConville was the victim of a terrible wrong done by the IRA, but said Wednesday’s action was a deliberate attempt to influence the outcome of European elections due in three weeks’ time.
DUP leader Mr Robinson said it would have been political policing if the PSNI had decided not to investigate Mr Adams because of the pending poll.
