Prosecutors in the U.S. are demanding that a university hand over to Britain taped interviews in which former IRA members purportedly accuse Gerry Adams of running a secret death squad.
| He's always said his own hands were clean, though no one ever really believed him. |
Researchers on an oral history project for Boston College obtained the testimonies from two convicted IRA terrorists between 2001 and 2006. The interviews being sought by Northern Ireland police are with Brendan Hughes, who was head of the IRA in Belfast, and Dolours Price, who took part in the 1973 Old Bailey car bombing and the unsolved killings of at least four people. Both later fell out with Adams and Sinn Fein, criticising the Northern Ireland peace process.
| Because Mr. Adams was willing to make peace with the hated Prots and British. |
The college says the pair only agreed to talk on condition their taped confessions remained sealed and their identities protected until after their deaths. Hughes died in 2008, but Price is still alive. Lawyers for the college claim releasing the details 'prematurely' would not only damage the peace process but break the IRA's 'code of silence' and could lead to 'punishment by death'.
| Since they themselves hand that punishment out to others they should understand that it could boomerang. The heart (urp!) bleeds... |
But Northern Ireland police want the tapes now, convinced they hold crucial clues to at least nine unsolved murders as well as kidnappings in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
Some of the testimony from Hughes has already been used in a book and TV programme.
| But turning it over to the police is somehow different... |
In his interview, he spoke about serving alongside Adams and claimed the Sinn Fein leader was involved in the 1972 murder of Jean McConville, a mother of ten from Belfast. Adams has denied being involved in the killing, claiming Hughes was 'not well' at the time he gave the interview.
Adams, president of Sinn Fein, has always denied being an IRA member, let alone heading a unit which carried out some of its most brutal acts.
| But it makes sense that he couldn't lead Sinn Fein without having been blooded at some point along the way. |
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