The family of IRA murder victim Jean McConville wants her killers to face trial at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
Jean McConville’s son Michael also said Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, who denies being in the IRA or having any knowledge of who murdered his mother, is a liar and a hypocrite.
Michael McConville was responding to a claim by Adams on 60 Minutes on Sunday night that mother-of-10 Jean McConville’s murder was “something that happens in wars.”
Adams was asked by interviewer Scott Pelley, “How do you orphan 10 children? What kind of depravity is that?”
Adams responded: “That’s what happens in wars, Scott. That’s not to minimize it. That’s what American soldiers do, Irish Republican soldiers do, you know. That’s what happens in every single conflict.”
Michael McConville told RTE on Monday, “I think to be honest that Gerry Adams is a hypocrite. If this had happened to an IRA family and 10 children were left orphaned would he say the same thing? I don’t think so.
“The reason why I’m calling him a hypocrite is because he apologized to me in one of the meetings that we had, and he apologized for the murder of my mother, and he apologized for the way the IRA treated our family after.”
McConville added, “There’s Gerry Adams saying this is a war. If this is a war then the execution and death and burial of our mother, and kidnapping of our mother, is a war crime. Ireland is the only place where people are not allowed to be charged with war crimes.”
Jean McConville’s murder is one of the most high profile during The Troubles. She was dragged away from her home in Belfast by an IRA gang of up to 12 men and women in 1972 after being accused of passing information to the British army in Belfast.
Former IRA man Brendan Hughes claimed in the Boston College Oral History Project that Adams had a role in ordering the murder of Jean McConville.
Michael McConville said Adams’ apologies did not mean anything to him now or in the past.
“He would never come out and apologize in public about it, but he wants to do everything behind closed doors. And this is the way this man’s life has been run since The Troubles have started,” he said.
McConville believes the truth will eventually emerge. “I don’t know how it’s going to come about, but I think people sometimes slip up on things they are going to say or else they have a guilty conscious that makes them tell the truth,” he said.
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