On Wednesday, police in Belfast arrested Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams for questioning in the 1972 kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville, an Irish widow believed by the Irish Republican Army to be a spy for the British Army.

Adams has denied having any involvement in McConville's abduction or death.

"I believe that the killing of Jean McConville and the secret burial of her body was wrong and a grievous injustice to her and her family," he said in a statement. "Well publicised, malicious allegations have been made against me. I reject these. While I have never disassociated myself from the IRA and I never will, I am innocent of any part in the abduction, killing or burial of Mrs McConville."

McConville, a widowed mother of 10, was abducted in front of her children from her home in 1972.

"They came about tea time and they dragged her out of the bathroom and dragged her out," McConville's daughter, Helen McKendry, told CNN in 2012. "...All I ever wanted was to know the reason why they killed my mother."

In 2003, a man walking along a beach in County Louth found McConville's partially-buried remains. An autopsy revealed she'd been killed by a gunshot wound to the back of the head.

The IRA accused her of being an informant, claims later refuted during an investigation by the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman.

Another IRA leader, Ivor Bell, was charged with aiding and abetting McConville's murder last month.

Both arrests were spurred by the release of tapes of former paramilitary fighters made by Boston College as part of the Belfast Project. Participants believed their interviews would remain secret until after their deaths, but a series of court rulings in the U.S. allowed some recordings to be handed over to Irish authorities.

McConville was one of the "Disappeared," a group of 16 people that, in 1999, the IRA admitted to killing and secretly burying. Seven of the 16 bodies still haven't been found.

[Image via AP]