Jean McConville with some of her 10 children prior to her abduction
Detectives in the North have arrested a 58 year-old man in connection with the murder and abduction of Jean McConville in 1972.
The man was arrested in west Belfast this morning and brought to the Serious Crime Suite in Antrim Police Station.
This is the latest in a series of arrests in connection with Mrs McConville’s death this year.
In December 1972, Mrs McConville, a mother of 10, was abducted from her home in the Divis flats in west Belfast by a gang of up to 12 men and women.
Her family had later speculated the IRA wrongly assumed she was an informer. Mrs McConville had also converted from Protestant to Catholic to marry her husband Arthur McConville, a Catholic former British Army soldier who died of cancer in early 1972.
In the years that followed the signing of the Belfast Agreement, the Republican movement insisted Mrs McConville was an informer.
Former IRA member Brendan Hughes alleged she had only been killed after being warned to stop supplying information. However, a Police Ombudsman investigation in 2006 found no evidence to support that contention.
It also concluded the murder had not been investigated until 1995, when a minor probe was undertaken by the RUC.
After years of searching, Mrs McConville’s body was found in 2003 when heavy rain unearthed the remains at Shelling Hill Beach on the Cooley peninsula in Co Louth, 50 miles from her home.
