BELFAST: Major cracks are appearing in the deal that brought peace to Northern Ireland, and there appears to be no easy fix. Police investigating an unsolved 1972 murder on Wednesday arrested Irish nationalist leader Gerry Adams, whose Sinn Fein party was for decades the political ally of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) militants fighting to end British rule in Northern Ireland.

Reviled by some as an apologist for bombers, hailed by others as a freedom fighter and peacemaker, Adams led Sinn Fein in the talks that produced the 1998 Good Friday agreement, which ended three decades of sectarian killing in Northern Ireland. His arrest raises questions about two cornerstones of that deal: the pardoning of militants, and the confidence of all sides in the neutrality of the police.

The province now faces an unpalatable choice between driving forward with prosecutions that have the potential to bring down its power-sharing government, or telling families that the killers of their loved ones will never be brought to justice.

“This could destabilise the entire process if this goes further into serious arrests,” said Malachi O’Doherty, a Belfast-based author who has written extensively on the violence between mainly Catholic Irish nationalists and Protestant pro-British Loyalists that tore Northern Ireland apart. “If it doesn’t balance at least [with the arrest of major pro-British figures], this is going to be calamitously unsettling,” he said.

Before his arrest in connection with the 1972 abduction and murder of Jean McConville, mother of 10, he told Irish state broadcaster RTE he was “innocent of any part in the abduction, killing or burial of Mrs McConville”.

The arrest sparked a furious reaction from his Sinn Fein colleague Martin McGuinness, deputy first minister in Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government, in which Protestant and Catholic ministers work side by side. McGuinness blamed “dark forces” and a “cabal” within the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), saying his colleague’s detention was an example of “political policing”.

It was the first time in the decade since the PSNI was formed to replace the Royal Ulster Constabulary — widely reviled by Catholics for perceived pro-British bias — that one of the major parties had so directly questioned the neutrality of the police. McGuinness stopped short of saying Sinn Fein, the largest nationalist party, would withdraw its support for the PSNI, a move that would spark a major crisis. But he said it would wait and see if the Adams situation was resolved in a satisfactory manner.

Historic crimes

At the heart of the stand-off is the fact the 1998 deal had neither a blanket amnesty nor the kind of exhaustive Peace and Reconciliation Commission that lifted the threat of prosecution from South Africans who confessed to apartheid-era crimes.

While nothing in the Good Friday accord would prevent a prosecution of Adams or other senior Sinn Fein leaders, there was a widespread expectation in the nationalist community that this would not happen, said O’Doherty.

Yet in the absence of an amnesty, there is no mechanism to stop investigations into senior figures by police and other authorities charged with probing crimes from the period known as the Troubles. These include an ombudsman body and a historical inquiries team. Instead of an amnesty, the 1998 deal created a patchwork of smaller measures.

The vast majority of people in prison for crimes related to the Troubles saw their sentences suspended. The only element of the accord that would impact Adams directly, if he were to be charged and tried, is a measure that limits any sentence for Troubles-related crimes to two years.

Pro-British anger

The first major sign that a decade of relative peace might be under threat came last year, when hundreds of pro-British youths staged daily riots over a decision to stop flying the British flag over Belfast city hall.The protests were widely seen to have been fuelled by moves to prosecute pro-British Loyalist paramilitaries — and a perception of a lack of prosecutions against nationalists.

The idea floated by the Attorney General last year of a blanket amnesty was shot down by politicians across the spectrum, and lawyers have suggested it might not have been possible under UK law. There has been heavy coverage in recent days of the family of McConville, who disappeared after being dragged screaming from her 10 children by abductors — a crime the IRA only admitted to in 1993.

Among the wider public, many are eager to close the door on the past in order to extend the calm and relative prosperity that Northern Ireland has enjoyed for the past decade. “Most people would like to draw a line in the sand, just finish here and go on,” said Andrew Loker, 62, a bank worker in central Belfast.—Reuters