The police investigation into the death of IRA murder victim Jean McConville has been criticised sharply by the North's Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan, who yesterday cleared her of republican claims that she was an informant for the British army.
A widowed mother of 10 children, Mrs McConville was abducted and killed in December 1972 by the IRA, which later claimed she was passing information to the British army about IRA activities at Divis Flats in West Belfast. Her body was found 31 years later when walkers stumbled upon it on a beach in Co Louth in August 2003.
Michael and Jim McConville lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman's office two years ago, concerning the police investigation into her disappearence. Mrs O'Loan indicated that her inquiries had gone back over police, army and MI5 records, before reaching the conclusion that Mrs McConville was not an agent.
"We have looked very extensively at all the intelligence available at the time," she said. "There is no evidence that Mrs McConville gave information to the police, the military or the security service. She was not an informant."
But the Ombudsman also criticised the police. "My investigation has also found that police didn't carry out a proper investigation into Mrs McConville's death. She was simply regarded as a missing person.
"The fact (is) that her children were split up, their families destroyed, their lives were very blighted. Their story is a terrible story and they are better placed to tell that story than I can, but they have suffered immensely," she said.
It was 27 years after her abduction before any information was available on the fate of Mrs McConville. Finally, in March 1999, the IRA confirmed it had carried out the killing but alleged she was an "informer" who admitted passing information to the British army.
The claim was an additional burden on the family, and Mrs O'Loan made clear that her intervention took account of humanitarian concerns. It was outside her "normal" role to confirm or deny the identity of alleged security agents, but the family circumstances made the case unique.
"Jean McConville left an orphaned family, the youngest of whom were six-year-old boys. The family have suffered extensively over the years, and that suffering has only been made worse by allegations that their mother was an informant," Mrs O'Loan said.
Michael McConville welcomed the clearing of his mother's name: "The stigma of it has always been very hard to bear. What people keep saying is that she was an informer. We as a family know fine rightly that my mother was never an informer."
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said: "Whatever about the circumstances surrounding Jean McConville's killing, the burial of her remains was a great injustice to the family."
SDLP leader Mark Durkan said the McConville family had got "relief and release from the slur that has always been there from the Provisional movement".