Talk:Murder of Jean McConville

message: The latest IRA statement was made on 8 July, in which they claim to have conducted an internal investigation which upheld their original claim that she was an informant. This probably merits a mention. 86.136.3.91 16:32, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: IRA statement

message: (moved here from his talk page at Vintagekits request):
Why exactly do you think that the views of PIRA should not be fairly represented on Wikipedia in reference to the (presumed?) death of Jean_McConville?
I am rather puzzled as to why you, Vintagekits, keep excising my new section referencing  the PIRA "Statement on the the Abduction and Killing of Mrs Jean McConville in December 1972", (dated 8 July 2006) by P O’Neill, Irish Republican Publicity Bureau, Dublin
Is it just because you are still editing carelessly and without respect to other editor's work by just hitting the revert button when you see 'naughty words' such as Murder and PIRA, Vintagekits?
It is no accident that Mitchel McLaughlin's immediate instinct when asked about Jean McConville is to start talking about the 1981 hunger strikes. For those brave protests, in which 10 men starved themselves to death rather than submit to an ordinary prison regime and therefore accept that they were just criminals serving their time, were the ultimate statement of how viscerally important the issue is for the Provos. A less epic version of this struggle for the moral high ground was played out at Philadelphia International Airport, when a former PIRA member, Joe Black, was briefly detained by the authorities. He had served time for carrying out a kneecapping but answered "no" to a question on the visa form about whether he had ever been convicted of a crime of "moral turpitude". To accept that the deliberate mutilation of a non-combatant involved moral turpitude would be to acknowledge that normal standards of morality apply to IRA operatives. Such a conclusion is, for PIRA and its apologists, unfathomable.
The fact is that even by PIRA's own standards, the murder of Jean McConville and hundreds of other acts of violence it has perpetrated are crimes. PIRA justifies itself by claiming that it was engaged in a war, and that wars inevitably involve the infliction of violence on others. Along with Mitchel McLaughlin, it conveniently forgets that there is also such a thing as a war crime.
And by all accepted definitions of war crimes, the murder of Jean McConville was an illegal act. The International Criminal Court, of which Ireland is a member, clearly states that war crimes do apply to "an armed conflict not of an international character", a category which obviously applies to the irish troubles.
Under this heading, it defines as crimes a number of acts against non-combatants that the Provisional IRA perpetrated against Jean McConville, including "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture", and "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all judicial guarantees which are generally recognised as indispensable."
The Provisional IRA's refusal to disclose Jean McConville's fate or produce her body also constituted a war crime, that of "enforced disappearance of persons", defined as "the arrest, detention or abduction of persons by, or with the authorisation, support or acquiescence of, a State or a political organisation, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the fate or whereabouts of those persons." 
With a hypocrisy that would be breathtaking had it not become so familiar, Sinn Féin regularly supports calls for these international laws to be enforced - so long as the crimes in question happened elsewhere. At the time when there were attempts to prosecute the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in the UK and Spain, for example, An Phoblacht quoted with approval Virginia Díaz, a member of the Spanish prosecution team against Pinochet: "One of the consequences of the Pinochet case has been the creation of an International Criminal Court to take on cases of crimes against humanity. 'But what is more important' , highlights Virginia, 'is the final confirmation that crimes against humanity are imprescriptible and that human rights are inviolable. There is no possible immunity to cover those responsible for those crimes'." Except, of course, the immunity of those inoculated against guilt by their own tender sense of honour. 
However, I must congratulate your improvement in tone (if not the quality and care you take with your actual edits, Vintagekits). Keep up the improvement!...Gaimhreadhan(kiwiexile at DMOZ)  • 20:44, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you really expect anyone to engage in a discuss with you or to assist you when you use abusive and provokative language such as that?--Vintagekits 21:07, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Been thinking about this, inspired by the attempt to categorise IRA Prisoners of War as "People Convicted of Terrorism" on the basis that such a category is verifiable fact and thus can't be POV. How about one for Jean Mc and others :Category: People executed as touts. Verifiable fact. doesn't mean they were touts.  Same logic surely? (Sarah777 23:50, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Indeed it is the same logic, and it appears to be entirely valid per WP:V (except informer is not a proper noun). Now you have established the policy doesn't favour any particular POV. Congratulations. Rockpocket 06:41, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course the prisoners were still POWs and should be categorised as such; but as I said at the start of this I'd accept the "convicted as" (despite my reservations regarding it's implications) if it is balanced by cat:POW. This is purely a compromise, not what I'd support otherwise; as I feel if somebody doesn't move we will get stuck here. (Sarah777 11:50, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Result of PIRA investigation 

message: Source number 11 in this page is an opinion piece, used eight times in the article as a source for a factual assertions: Amanda Foreman (5 December 2010). "Sinn Fein should never be able to escape Jean McConville's ghost". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 April 2014.  
From "Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources":
Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (op-eds) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact.
Are we now using opinions as sources? --Renglish (talk) 08:59, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opinions vs. Facts 

message: I'd like to update this for 2015, after a recent report in American media. Bearian (talk) 00:59, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updates 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: On 04 Feb 2016 – Peter Wilson (Northern Ireland kidnapping and disappearance case) (talk · edit · hist) was requested to be moved by Tbhotch (t · c). Since that move might have an impact on the titling of this article, please see the discussion and comment there. Tiggerjay (talk) 18:04, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments requested regarding a move that relates to this page 

message: I have looked into this, and it appears to be at best an error or at worst a complete fabrication by Amanda Foreman, embellished by Wikipedia. I won't bother with the many inaccuracies in the opinion piece, I will just address the important one. Amanda Foreman wrote:
"We also now know that she was interrogated and tortured after the abduction; she was beaten with such force that her bones cracked and her hands were mutilated. The actual cause of death was a single shot to the back of the head."
There is no evidence for the claim that her bones cracked and her hands were mutilated, despite Foreman casually tossing it out as an established fact. There are two possible reliable sources of evidence - first hand accounts and medical evidence, and a third unreliable source of evidence - rumours and speculation. To date not a single person has admitted causing any such injuries to Jean McConville. There is no medical evidence to support the allegation, per multiple reliable sources:
*Irish Independent, 21 October 2003 "The DNA tests were carried out in London after an earlier post-mortem examination at the Louth Co Hospital had concluded that Mrs McConville had been shot once in the back of the head. It ruled out suggestions that she had been mutilated and tortured before being murdered"
*Irish Times, 5 April 2004 "Dr Marie Cassidy, the State Pathologist, told the inquest Mrs McConville died from a single gunshot wound to the back of the head.  A flattened .22 calibre lead bullet was found in her nasal passage during post-mortem. Dr Cassidy said there was no pathological evidence to suggest if Mrs McConville was kneeling when she was shot.  She also said there was no evidence on Mrs McConville's skeletal remains to suggest that she had suffered any other injuries prior to her death."
So there you have it, no evidence of any injuries except a gunshot wound to the back of the head. The original claim by Foreman is thus based on nothing more than rumour and speculation, and is contradicted by the medical evidence reported on prior to the inquest and given at the inquest. This claim was expanded upon when added to the article at 00:39, 1 May 2014, the addition reading "After being interrogated and tortured - her later post-mortem revealed cracked bones and mutilated hands". That the post-mortem supposedly revealed that has since found its way into news articles published after that time, such as the Daily Mail and Belfast Telegraph, journalists really shouldn't come to Wiki looking for facts for an article. I have tagged the offending sentence, and will be removing it in due course unless very reliable sources are provided. Mo ainm~Talk 16:11, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Based on the above, I see no reason why the information should remain in the article. But it would be prudent to allow anyone wishing to retain it some time to perform their own investigation.DanceHallCrasher (talk) 19:29, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

text: I think you're wrong about Foreman making it up, since this claim clearly pre-dates that Guardian article. For example The People (October 5, 2003): "Despite reports in last week's News of the World claiming that the mother of ten had two of her fingers chopped off, detectives say the claims simply aren't true." There is a legitimate concern that Wikipedia has helped spread this rumour, so perhaps rather than removing it the article should mention it and include the very clear denial by the police? shellac (talk) 10:35, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe some text reading something like "McConville was killed by a gunshot to the back of the head, there was no evidence of any other injuries to her body" should cover it.DanceHallCrasher (talk) 10:42, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

text: Maybe we could cite WP:BLUE considering everyone but those in deep denial seem able or willing to accept the widely known and acknowledged facts of the situation. But hey you continue to try to cover it up.... Mabuska (talk) 22:40, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Torture claim tagged as dubious 

message: The claim in the lede that McConville was "brutally beaten" by the IRA after being kidnapped was included in discussion above, since the claim was tagged as dubious. "brutally" is inappropriate editorialising. There is no source for the claim. Foreman is not a reliable source. She was not there, she has not spoken to anyone who was there and her claims are denied by the Gardaí and the State's pathologist.
That McConville was beaten by unidentified people the night before her abduction is a different claim to the one currently in the lede, and it would be up to those wishing to include it to make a case for that and seek agreement. There is no evidence that it was done by the IRA, the Ombudsman's report does not even speculate that it was the IRA who were responsible for the events the day before her abduction.
The claim in the lede that McConville "was kidnapped, brutally beaten, and finally shot dead by the Provisional IRA" is partially incorrect and has been discussed above. I am correcting it again.DanceHallCrasher (talk) 10:20, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe we could cite WP:BLUE considering everyone but those in deep denial seem able or willing to accept the widely known and acknowledged facts of the situation. But hey you continue to try to cover it up.... Mabuska (talk) 22:40, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Lede

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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