Sinn Fein MEP Martina Anderson (right) was among the Derry republicans who attended today’s rally in Belfast in support of Gerry Adams.
A number of Derry republicans have attended a rally staged in Belfast calling for the release of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams today.
The 65-year-old is facing his fourth night in police custody at the serious crime suite at Antrim police station where he is being questioned by detectives from the PSNI’S Terrorist Investigtion Unit about the abduction and murder of Belfast mother-of-ten Jean McConville in 1972.
Last night, a judge granted the PSNI a further 48 hours to hold him in custody.
Speaking at the rally, held at the unveiling of a mural of Mr Adams on the Falls Road in west Belfast this afternoon, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness again claimed the arrest of the Louth TD was “politically motivated.”
The Sinn Fein MLA told those present an “embittered rump of the old RUC” within the PSNI was trying to settle old scores.
Mr McGuinness added: ”No police force anywhere in the world is immune from criticism if it is acting in a politically biased and partisan fashion.
“The arrest of Gerry Adams is evidence of that fact that there is an element in the PSNI who are against the peace process and hate Gerry Adams and hate Sinn Fein.
“They are what the reformers within the PSNI have described to us as the ‘Dark Side’.”
Mr McGuinness has hinted Sinn Fein would review its support for the policing if the veteran leader was charged and today he accused the PSNI of being guilty of “political policing” and using information that had been around for 40 years.
He said: “In my view this is a failed attempt at the replay of the effort in 1978 to charge Gerry Adams with membership of the IRA.
“That case was based on hearsay, gossip and newspaper articles. It failed then and it will fail now.
“Thirty six years later those within the PSNI who are hostile to the peace process are using the same old dirty tricks.
“They are deliberately and cynically exploiting the awful killing of Jean McConville and the grief and hurt inflicted on her family.”
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