The Gerry Adams Arrest.

On Wednesday (30/4/14) evening leader of the Sinn Fein party and member of the Irish Parliament Gerry Adams was arrested over the 1972 murder of Jean McConville after attending a police station in Northern Ireland voluntarily. Sinn Fein quickly dismissed this arrest as politically motivated and this seems likely to be the case.

Recently the government of Republic of Ireland (ROI) have been forging closer links with the UK government which occupied and colonised Ireland for the best part of 400 years. The most obvious symbol of this new close relationship was the recent state visit of the Irish President to meet the British Queen. For many people the tone of that visit was Britain celebrating the regaining of one its colonies. Although Irish independence hasn't been a major political issue in Ireland for the last 50 odd years this left a lot of people feeling uncomfortable at the direction the Irish government is taking. This is likely to contribute to a collapse of support for the Irish government with the Fine Gael part of the governing coalition being particularly affected. So it appears that what the UK has actually done is strengthen its links with a small group of Irish politicians who will soon be leaving office. The European Union (EU) elections that take place in a little over three weeks are likely to provide the first real test of Fine Gael's popularity.

As a result the UK has been going to great lengths to portray anyone who supports the idea of Irish independence as thugs and terrorists by digging up Republican murders and atrocities committed during the Northern Irish Troubles. As was a hallmark of the Troubles murders and atrocities committed by Loyalists are being completely ignored.

This began with the arrest of John Downey for carrying out the 1982 Hyde Park bombing on behalf of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). In February 2014 he was released after it emerged that he had been granted an immunity from prosecution as part of the Good Friday peace Agreement. This prompted Loyalist politicians and their allies in the UK Conservative Party to whip themselves up into a frenzy with some calling for the Good Friday Agreement and therefore peace in Northern Ireland to be scrapped.

Next came the arrest and charge of Seamus Daly over the 1998 Omagh bombing - an atrocity so bad it is permanently seared into my memory. Revisiting the Omagh bombing is of course a very risky course for the UK to take because it is well established that the UK security service MI5 had such prior knowledge of the attack that they were able to watch in real time as the bomb was driven from the farm where it was built to the street where it was detonated but did nothing to stop the attack. So at best the UK allowed the Omagh bombing to take place because it shared Daly's Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA) objective of carrying out an attack so horrific that it would collapse the Good Friday Agreement. At worse the UK helped plan the Omagh bombing.

Then there was the re-opening of the Jean McConville who was alleged to have been kidnapped and murdered by the PIRA because she was acting as an informant for the British. So far this resumed investigation has seen five people arrested and questioned by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) with only one - Ivor Bell - being charged with any crime. Gerry Adams becomes the sixth person arrested and questioned.

With Adams still being held and questioned as I write the PSNI are remaining tight-lipped about what evidence they have. However it seems that central to the investigation are statements given by former PIRA commander Brendan Hughes as part of an oral history project for Boston College. Hughes died in 2008 meaning that his statements cannot be introduced as evidence at any trial for the simple reason that it is impossible to question him to find out whether he is telling the truth or not. On the extremely rare occasions that testimony of the dead can be used as evidence it has to be given in the form of a affidavit given under oath in the presence of an officer of the Court. Without that it is simply hear-say and no different from me turning 'round and saying; "Last night I heard someone in a pub swearing blind that Peter Robinson murdered Jean McConville."

So unless the PSNI have something much more substantial then the Boston tapes they do not have the evidence to charge Adams over the McConville murder let alone convict him. In fact it seems unlikely they even have sufficient evidence to arrest him. Somehow though I doubt that the PSNI will be admitting that before the EU elections.

10:55 on 1/5/14 (UK date).