Gerry Adams ordered the murder of Jean McConville, says former IRA Belfast commander Brendan Hughes

SINN Fein president Gerry Adams’s role in the IRA’s ‘Disappeared’ is not going away.

The Stormont Assembly will debated the issue of his direct role in ordering men and women to be abducted, murdered and buried in secret for being alleged informants.

On Tuesday, an Ulster Unionist Party motion in the Assembly notes with “extreme concern” allegations of Gerry Adams’s involvement in ordering the disappearance of Jean McConville in 1972.

The mother of ten was snatched by female IRA members and handed over to an ‘interrogation team’ before she was murdered and secretly buried in the Republic.

The Assembly debate has been prompted by award winning Daragh McIntryre’s BBC/RTE documentary, The Disappeared.

It broadcast for the first time audiotapes from the late IRA hunger striker Brendan Hughes.

Hughes – known as ‘The Dark’ – was once a close friend of Gerry Adams.

However in the tapes he accused the Sinn Féin president of ordering the murder and secret burial of the mother of 10.

In the recording, Hughes, who died in 2008, is heard saying: “There was only one man who gave that order for that woman to be executed – and that man is now the head of Sinn Féin.”

Hughes also says that Adams went to the McConville children after their mother was abducted and promised an internal IRA investigation.

“That man is the man who gave the order for that woman to be executed. I did not give the order to execute that woman. He did.”

East Belfast Alliance MLA Chris Lyttle said the documentary had “raised several questions about Gerry Adams which he is clearly uncomfortable answering.”

He added: “There is a need for all republicans to disclose any information they may have on the disappeared.”

The remains of seven bodies have yet to be located.