IRA murdered mother 'not an informer'
A mother of 10 who was abducted and shot dead by the IRA nearly 34 years ago was officially cleared today of allegations that she was an informer.
Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan said her investigators had found no evidence Jean McConville passed information to the security services.
The IRA claimed Mrs McConville, who was seized as she went to the aid of a fatally wounded British soldier outside her front door in December 1972, worked for the intelligence’s agencies.
Public pressure forced them into making an apology for the murder of the Belfast woman, but they never withdrew the slur.
Her remains were found on a beach near Dundalk, Co Louth in August 2003 – one of the nine of the so-called Disappeared who were murdered by the IRA and secretly buried during the 1970s.
The ombudsman launched her own inquiry after complaints by the McConville family into the police investigation of the killing.
Mrs O’Loan said it was not her normal role to confirm or deny the identity of people working as agents for the security services.
But she added: “However, this situation is unique. Jean McConville left an orphaned family, the youngest of whom were six-year-old boys. The family have suffered extensively over the years, as we all know, and that suffering has only been made worse by allegations that their mother was an informant.
“As part of our investigation we have looked very extensively at all the intelligence available at the time. There is no evidence that Mrs McConville gave information to the police, the military or the security service. She was not an informant.”
The police ombudsman said she will give the family more details of her findings soon and will make those details public.
Vera McVeigh, 82, mother of Columba, another of the Disappeared, said she was relieved Mrs McConville’s name had been cleared.
But she insisted her son, killed by the IRA in 1975, was innocent as well.
The 17-year-old from Donaghmore near Dungannon in Co Tyrone was working in Dublin as a painter. Searches have been carried out near Emyvale in Co Monaghan on three occasions, but his body has never been found.
“I have no doubt that my son is innocent. I could not pass on information about somebody I knew nothing about, so how can they?” she said.
“I have no hope of them finding my boy. My son was innocent, he was just 17 and he never said anything to the police.
“They can say what they like, they can do whatever they like, I am not interested in what these vile scum are saying.
“They are liars and they are evil and what they did to my son is unforgivable.”
Catholic priest Monsigor Denis Faul from Carrickmore had appealed a number of times for Columba’s body to be returned. The priest died last month.
In 1999, the IRA offered to help locate the bodies of the nine Disappeared. Three victims were found in 1999 while one was uncovered in 2003.
The IRA apologised for the grief suffered by the families of the Disappeared in October 2003.
The son of the murdered West Belfast woman, Michael McConville, said he was pleased that his mother’s name had been cleared.
“I am glad that Nuala O’Loan has stated the facts that my mother was not an informer.
“I am also glad that someone has stood up for her because this is the first time that has happened,” he said.
“The stigma of it has always been very hard to bear. What people keep saying is that she was an informer.
“We as a family know fine rightly that my mother was never an informer.”
He added that if the IRA had nothing to hide, then why did it not make his mother’s body available.
“I think the police owes the McConville family an apology for their non-investigation into this.”
