The TroublesBelfast court denies bail for former IRA commander accused of 1972 killing
Ivor Bell, 77, a former Irish Republican Army (IRA) commander accused of abducting and killing Jean McConville, 37, a mother of ten, in 1972, on Saturday was denied bail in a Belfast court. Prosecutors said the break in the case came as a result of information found in the recordings of Boston College’s oral history project which interviewed Northern Ireland paramilitary fighters involved in the long sectarian conflict there. The interviews were taped on the understanding that they would not be made public during the lifetimes of the subjects, but last year a U.S. court granted police in Northern Ireland access to the recordings.
Ivor Bell, 77, a former Irish Republican Army (IRA) commander accused of abducting and killing Jean McConville, 37, a mother of ten, in 1972, on Saturday was denied bail in a Belfast court.
Prosecutors said the break in the case came as a result of information found in the recordings of an American college’s oral history project which interviewed Northern Ireland paramilitary fighters involved in the long sectarian conflict there.
McConville was killed by IRA following allegations that she had passed information to the British Army.
The New York Times reports that earlier in 1972, Bell was part of an IRA delegation — which included Gerry Adams, now the president of Sinn Fein, and Martin McGuinness, a former IRA member who is now Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister — which held secret talks with the British government.
In 1982 Bell became the IRA’s chief of staff, but was later removed from the organization.
McConville was buried in an unmarked grave and became one of sixteen “disappeared” – civilians who were accused by the IRA of collaborating with the British authorities, and who were killed by the IRA and buried in unmarked graves so their families could not claim the bodies.
In 2003 McConville’s remains were discovered by accident, as were the bodies of seven others of the disappeared. The bodies of eight of the disappeared have never been found.
The Times notes that in 2006, Northern Ireland’s police said there was no evidence that McConville had ever passed information to the British security forces.
In the Saturday hearing in Belfast Magistrates Court the prosecutor said that a transcript from Boston College’s oral history project showed that Bell had “played a critical role in the aiding, abetting, counsel and procurement of the murder of Jean McConville.”
Some of McConville’s children and grandchildren were in court on Saturday.
Bell’s lawyer, Peter Corrigan, rejected the charge that his client had been involved in the killing, and said that the prosecution’s case was entirely based on an interview in the Boston College archive with a man referred to only as “Z,” who the prosecution says is Bell.
Whether Z is Bell or not, Corrigan stressed that the individual interviewed explicitly denied any involvement in the murder. “During those interviews, Z explicitly states that he was not involved with the murder of Jean McConville,” he said. “The defense submits that the evidence does not amount to a row of beans in relation to the murder of Jean McConville.”
The Boston College oral history archive consists of interviews conducted with former members of paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland. The purpose of the archive is to chronicle their actions during the Northern Ireland conflict. The Times notes that it subsequently emerged that two former members of the IRA, both now dead, detailed their involvement in the murder of McConville. The two interviewees, Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price, also accused Gerry Adams of authorizing her abduction, a claim Adams denies.
The interviews were taped on the understanding that they would not be made public during the lifetimes of the subjects, but last year a U.S. court granted police in Northern Ireland access to the recordings.
