The TroublesIrish Republican Ivor Bell to stand trial for 1972 murder of Jean McConville

Published 7 July 2016

A judge ruled that veteran Irish republican Ivor Bell, 79, will stand trial for involvement in the 1972 murder of Jean McConville, a mother of ten children. Bell is charged with aiding and abetting the kidnapping, killing, and secret burial of the widow. The case against Bell could be brought as a result of the content of tapes police secured from an oral history archive collated by Boston College in the United States.

A judge ruled that veteran Irish republican Ivor Bell, 79, will stand trial for involvement in the 1972 murder of Jean McConville, a mother of ten children. Bell is charged with aiding and abetting the kidnapping, killing, and secret burial of the widow.

The Irish Independent reports that Bell,who is also charged with IRA membership, appeared before District Judge Amanda Henderson at the Belfast Magistrates’ Court, where he was told the case would proceed to the Crown Court.

There is a case to answer at this stage,” Henderson said. The judge said she was “satisfied” the strength of the evidence was sufficient to meet the threshold to return the accused for trial.

Judge Henderson’s decision came after a two-day preliminary inquiry at the Laganside court complex last week.

Bell denies all the charges against him. 

of his solicitor, he replied “no” when asked if he had any response or intended to call witnesses.

In late 1972, McConville, who was 37 when she was killed, was taken from her home in Belfast by an IRA gang of up to twelve men and women. The IRA accused her of passing information to the British Army.

The allegations were later found to be false by the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman.

McConville was shot in the back of the head and secretly buried fifty miles from her home, becoming one of the twenty or so “Disappeared” victims of the Troubles.

It took the IRA until 1999 that the IRA admitted the murder.

McConville’s remains were found in August 20003 on Shelling Hill beach in County Louth.

The case against Bell could be brought as a result of the content of tapes police secured from an oral history archive collated by Boston College in the United States.

The BU Belfast Project was based on interviews by academics of former Irish republican and loyalist paramilitaries. The interviews were conducted with the understanding that the accounts of the Troubles would remain unpublished until the death of those who were interviewed for the project.

When the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) began to investigate the death of McConville, however, a U.S. court ruled that the understanding between BU and the interviewees was meaningless, and that police agencies could have access to the interviews in the context of criminal investigation.

It is not clear whether Bell himself was interviewed – he denies it – but the material the PSNI found in the BU files allowed it to bring charges against Bell in march 2014.