The leader of Northern Ireland's political party Sinn Fein was arrested in connection to a murder committed over four decades ago.
Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein since 1983, is accused of taking part in the Irish Republican Army's 1972 abduction and murder of a woman thought to be a spy, the Northern Ireland Police said according to CBS News.
Adams reportedly turned himself over to the police on Wednesday evening and was arrested. The 65-year-old leader denies he had a role in the murder of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of 10 children, the BBC reported.
"Well publicized, malicious allegations have been made against me," Adams said in a statement obtained by the BBC.
"While I have never disassociated myself from the IRA and I never will, I am innocent of any part of the adduction, killing or burial of Ms. McConville."
The IRA admitted in 1998 to shooting and killing McConville after kidnapping her from her home in Belfast, CBS News reported. The 37-year-old mother was believed to have been an informant, but was cleared of the allegation after an investigation by the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman, the BBC reported.
McConville is considered one of the Disappeared- those who were taken, murdered and secretly buried by republicans in Northern Ireland, the BBC reported. The murders were committed during the Troubles, a period of violence in the north that spanned 30 years between 1968 and 1998. Some 3,600 people are said to have died.
Two IRA members implicated Adams when they turned in taped conversations for a Boston College research project, CBS News reported. The project is meant to be an oral history of the Troubles.
The tapes also implicated another suspect in McConville's death, Ivor Bell, former leader of the Provisional IRA. Bell, 77, has been charged with aiding and abetting the woman's death, the BBC reported.
