DUBLIN (Reuters) – Police warned the family of Irish republican leader Gerry Adams a threat had been made to his life following his release from detention, his party said on Monday.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) released Adams on Sunday after questioning him over the 1972 abduction and murder of Jean McConville, a killing he says he had no part in.
After his release, police went to Adams’ house and told his wife Collette that criminals had made a serious threat against her husband’s life, Sinn Fein said.
“I can confirm that the PSNI visited the homes of Gerry Adams and (fellow Irish republican) Bobby Storey last night to warn them of a credible threat against their lives,” Sinn Fein Justice spokesperson Raymond McCartney said in a statement.
No comment was immediately available from the PSNI.
Catholic and Protestant Northern Irish leaders, including the province’s first and deputy first ministers Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, have received death threats in the past over their support of the peace process.
Three decades of sectarian conflict between mainly Catholic nationalists seeking Irish union and pro-British Protestants wishing to stay in the United Kingdom was mostly ended by a 1998 peace deal, but sporadic violence has grown in recent years.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Andrew Roche)
