THE SON OF JEAN McConville says he has information that could solve the case of his mother’s murder, but said he believed he would be killed by the IRA if he revealed the details.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Today with Sean O’Rourke, Michael McConville said he was present the day his mother was taken away by the IRA and recognised some of the people in the room.
Sean O’Rourke asked McConville what stopped him from coming forward with such information. He replied:
The IRA stops me from doing it. The IRA, I would say, would kill me or my family members.
He said that if he named names and pointed to those people in a court of law he believed he would be classed an informant and be killed by the IRA.
McConville added that he still sees some of the people on the street, stating that when he sees them he feels “sickened by them”.
“These people they don’t care about me, they don’t care about anyone,” he said.
Gerry Adams
McConville said he heard about recent developments from the PSNI, stating that they called him yesterday to inform him that a 65-year-old man was being questioned about the disappearance and murder of his mother.
“About an hour later, my brother phoned me to say it was Gerry Adams,” he said.
McConville, who was one of seven children present when his mother was taken away said:
The IRA came to the door and took our mother, we were all crying, my mother was crying, she had cuts and bruises on her face from the night before when the IRA had taken her out of the bingo hall.
Michael McConville was just eleven years old at the time.
“We were all clinging on to her. We were holding on to her. It took five to ten minutes for them to take her away,” he said.
“We never seen her again,” he added.
Ten or twelve people took Jean McConville
Describing that night McConville said that roughly ten or twelve people came to take away his mother, with some wearing masks and some not.
He said he recognised some of the people.
McConville said he first realised his mother was dead when an IRA man came to the door and gave them her purse and her rings.
A week after that he said the IRA grabbed him and put a hood over his head and took him to a house.
“They tied me to a chair and they beat me with sticks and put a gun to my head. They said they would kill me if I gave any information about the IRA. This went on for about three hours. At the end of it, they said they were going to shoot me and they fired a cap gun.”
He said he recognised two of them.
“They put the fear of god into us. I realised then if they could do this to an eleven year old child they definitely did murder my mother.”
McConville said he didn’t believe that the IRA’s campaign was over as people are still getting murdered, adding:
I would say if any of our family members say they know who were involved in it we would be treated as informants and we would be shot.
He concluded by stating that there was no proof his mother was an informant.
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams remains in police custody overnight after being arrested by detectives investigating the murder of Belfast mother-of-ten Jean McConville.
Adams has rejected allegations made by former republican colleagues that he had a role in ordering the IRA killing in 1972.
He was detained last night after voluntarily presenting himself for interview at a police station in Antrim.
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