Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Bell acquitted over Mcconville
Mcconville children demand a public inquiry into mum’s death
VETERAN republican Ivor Bell was yesterday acquitted of involvement in the IRA murder of mother-of-10 Jean Mcconville.
The 82-year-old former Provo was found not guilty after a judge ruled the Boston Tapes – the main evidence in the case – were “inadmissible”.
Mrs Mcconville was abducted from her home in the Divis area of West Belfast by a masked gang in late 1972 before being killed and disappeared.
Her body was not discovered until 2003 on a Co Louth beach.
Bell, from Ramoan Gardens in West Belfast, was acquitted of two counts of soliciting the murder.
Five of the 38-year-old’s children were in Belfast Crown Court and, in a statement issued afterwards, her son Michael said the family was “bitterly disappointed” at the outcome and demanded a full public inquiry.
He added: “This is the closest we are going to get to justice.”
Susan Townsley, who was six when her mother was abducted, choked back tears as she said: “This is the only thing we are going to get at the end of the day.
“As a family we are just going to have to stick together. It has been very hard on all of us.”
The trial – which saw former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams called as a witness – started last week but could not be reported on due to a restriction which was lifted yesterday.
All the allegations made against Mr Adams were rejected when he was called to give evidence earlier this week.
From the witness box, he said: “I want to deny categorically any involvement in the abduction, killing and burial of Jean Mcconville.”
UNRELIABLE
The jury of eight men and four women was played extracts of audio tapes from the controversial Boston College’s Belfast Project.
It was designed to become an oral historical account of the Troubles and included interviews with former senior paramilitaries about their roles during the conflict.
Director of the project was journalist Ed Moloney, while the interviewer was former IRA prisoner Anthony Mcintyre.
It was the latter’s role that formed part of the defence application to entirely exclude the Boston Tapes as evidence.
Extracts of two interviews, which were conducted with interviewee Z and who trial judge Mr Justice O’hara ruled was Bell, were played twice to the jury last week.
But after hearing evidence from a number of witnesses, the jury was addressed by the judge.
He said: “As a result of some legal rulings to legal arguments made over the last two days, there is now no evidence which the prosecution can put before you in order to support the case it was making against Mr Bell.
“My ruling now is to direct you to return a verdict of not guilty because you simply cannot find him to have done the acts alleged.”
The defendant had been excused from attending the trial due to ill health.
Before the proceedings began, he was examined by several doctors and was diagnosed as having vascular dementia. In his ruling, Mr Justice O’hara noted Mcintyre – who refused to co-operate with the court proceedings – “had an agenda” against Mr Adams, the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement.
He also felt that after listening to the interview with Bell, the tapes “clearly show Mr Mcintyre leading Mr Bell to speak against Gerry Adams”.
Mr Justice O’hara also raised the issue of a guarantee the interviewees, including Bell, were given at the time, namely their tapes would not be released until after their deaths.
The judge said this may have led to a situation where while Bell felt “liberated to tell the truth... the difficulty is he may
As a family we are going to have to stick together. It has been very hard SUSAN TOWNSLEY BELFAST YESTERDAY
also gave felt free to lie, distortion, exaggerate, blame and mislead”.
Branding the evidence on the tapes as “tainted”, Mr Justice O’hara said there was “clear bias” on the part of Mcintyre who was “out to get Mr Adams”, and the information given orally by Mr Bell was “unreliable as a direct result of the way it was induced by Mr Mcintyre”.
The judge also noted a witness who was involved in the early stages of the Belfast Project, Prof Kevin O’neill, branded the project as “deeply flawed because of the lack of proper consent on the part of the interviewees”.
The judge ruled all the evidence from the Boston Tapes was inadmissible on Wednesday morning.
He granted an overnight adjournment to allow the Crown time to consider its options and yesterday it was confirmed there would be no further evidence presented against Bell. In the tapes, Bell claimed Mr Adams and a man now deceased called Pat Mcclure discussed Mrs Mcconville’s fate at a West Belfast house in late 1972.
He said: “We were out in the back kitchen talking. He said, first and foremost, he said about this woman. She was a tout.
“The eldest kid was collecting the information. She was giving it to the Brits and they were getting paid and Pat laid out in detail everything that was happening.
“So I said, ‘Well Pat, she’s a tout’. I said, ‘And the fact she’s a woman shouldn’t save her’. Now I wasn’t told she had 10 kids and no husband.
“Had I been told that, I can’t say for sure I would have said, ‘No, don’t shoot her’. But I may have had second thoughts and say, ‘Hold on, what are we doing?”
Bell said later in the tapes he didn’t agree with plans to bury her. He added: “To kill and bury her, I couldn’t understand why they would bury her.
“She had 10 kids. If you are not going to throw her in the street, don’t shoot her at all.” In his evidence earlier this week, Mr Adams said: “I have never hidden my association with the IRA. I have never sought to distance myself.
“I have denied IRA membership, even though at the time that was a legitimate response to what was happening in republican workingclass communities.”
The Louth TD added: “The IRA did things, including this, that were totally wrong.”
Mr Adams denied he was at the meeting and that he was the officer commanding of the Belfast brigade of the IRA at the time of Mrs Mcconville’s abduction and murder.
He said: “I never had any discussions with Ivor Bell or indeed any others about Jean Mcconville.
“I don’t think Mrs Mcconville should have been shot... the IRA were totally wrong to have shot and secretly buried those folks.”
The IRA were totally wrong to have shot and secretly buried those folks GERRY ADAMS BELFAST CROWN COURT