http://www.sundayworld.com/top-stories/news/psni-widen-probe-into-adams-alleged-ira-commandPSNI widen probe into Adams' alleged IRA command.
PSNI investigators are quizzing Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams about his alleged role as an IRA commander in the Troubles.
Former IRA members and Sinn Fein party colleagues say Northern Ireland police are casting a wider net in their deepening efforts to prove that party leader Gerry Adams once commanded the outlawed IRA and ordered the 1972 killing of a Belfast mother of 10.
Details of an expanding trawl for evidence emerged Saturday as detectives spent a fourth day questioning Adams about the IRA's abduction, killing and secret burial of Jean McConville. Adams had been scheduled to be charged or released by Friday night but a judge granted police a 48-hour extension of his detention. Adams, 65, took part in the court hearing via a video link from the police's interrogation center west of Belfast.
Sinn Fein's deputy leader, Martin McGuinness, said he had been informed by Adams' legal team that detectives were questioning him about many of his speeches, writings and public appearances going back to the 1970s, when he was interned without trial as an IRA suspect and wrote a newspaper column from inside prison using the pen name Brownie.
Other aides to Adams and McGuinness said Catholic west Belfast residents with IRA affiliations had been approached by police recently, asking them to make statements about their knowledge of Adams' IRA activities.
Martin McGuinness has reiterated his belief that the arrest of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams was politically motivated, accusing members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland of being against the peace process.
McGuinness, Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, said there was an "embittered rump of the old RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary)" within the PSNI that was trying to settle old scores.
He spoke at the unveiling of a mural in Belfast of Adams, who is spending his fourth day in police custody in connection with the murder of mother-of-10 Jean McConville in 1972.
Mr McGuinness told the cheering crowd that Adams' arrest was designed to affect Sinn Fein ahead of local and European elections.
He said: "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'."
