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In this file photo dated 4 June, 1972 Dolours Price (left) and her sister Marian attend a civil rights demonstration in Belfast, Northern Ireland. AP Photo, File

Convicted IRA car bomber Dolours Price dies

Her death could have implications in the US due to a series of interviews in which she alleged that Gerry Adams was in the IRA. The interviews were conducted on the condition that they would not be released until after her death.

AN IRA VETERAN who accused Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams of involvement in IRA killings and bombings has been found dead in her home.

Dolours Price, 61, was a member of the Provisional IRA unit that launched the very first car-bomb attacks on London in 1973. She became one of Irish republicanism’s most trenchant critics of Adams and his conversion to political compromise in Northern Ireland.

Gardaí said foul play was not suspected in her death last night at her home in Malahide, north Dublin. But it could have implications as far away as the US Supreme Court.

In interviews Price repeatedly described Adams as her IRA commander in Catholic west Belfast in the early 1970s when the outlawed group was secretly abducting, executing and burying more than a dozen suspected informers in unmarked graves. Adams rejects the charges.

Since 2011 the PSNI have been fighting a legal battle with Boston College to secure audiotaped interviews with Price detailing her IRA career to see if they contain evidence relating to unsolved crimes, particularly the 1972 kidnapping and murder of a Belfast widow, Jean McConville. Price allegedly admitted being the IRA member who drove McConville across the Irish border to an IRA execution squad.

Boston College commissioned the collection of such interviews with veterans of Northern Ireland’s paramilitary warfare on condition their contents be kept secret until each interviewee’s death.

In October, the Supreme Court blocked the handover of the Price tapes pending resolution of a string of other connected lawsuits and legal challenges in lower US courts. Her death could trigger a new wave of legal petitions on both sides.

Price joined the IRA as a Belfast teenager, in part because her father Albert was a senior IRA figure. She led a 10-member IRA unit that planted four car bombs in central London on March 8, 1973, including outside the Old Bailey criminal courthouse and Scotland Yard police headquarters. Two detonated, wounding more than 200 people.

After the Provisional IRA cease-fire of 1997 paved the way for Adams’ Sinn Féin party to enter a new power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, Price denounced Adams as a hypocrite who had betrayed the cause of forcing Northern Ireland into the Irish Republic.

And in a 2012 interview with Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, Price accused Adams of sanctioning the 1973 bomb attacks during a Belfast IRA meeting.

“Adams started talking and said it was a big, dangerous operation. He said: ‘This could be a hanging job.’ He said: ‘If anyone doesn’t want to go [to London], they should up and leave now through the back door at 10-minute intervals.’ The ones that were left were the ones that went. I was left organizing it, to be the OC [officer commanding] of the whole shebang,” Price was quoted as saying.

Adams made no reference to Price’s accusations in a prepared statement on Price’s death today.

“She endured great hardship during her time in prison in the 1970s enduring a hunger strike which included force-feeding for over 200 days. In more recent years she has had many personal trials,” Adams said.

When asked later about Price’s criticisms, Adams said he had “no concerns about any of those issues because they are not true.”

Price had been counseled for depression and alcoholism for more than a decade after being convicted of using forged prescriptions to acquire drugs in 2001.

Price was diagnosed with psychological problems including anorexia nervosa during her prison sentence. She and her younger sister Marian, who also was imprisoned for the same bomb attack, received early paroles in 1980 on compassionate grounds. Britain sent Marian Price back to prison in 2011 over her alleged continued involvement in dissident IRA circles.

Dolours Price married the Belfast actor Stephen Rea in 1983 and they had two sons, but he divorced her in 2003.

Read: US Supreme Court halts turnover of secret IRA tapes >

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    Mute mike
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 9:21 AM

    Vita cortex worker hold a protest today between 12.30 to 1.30pm at Vita Cortex, Kensale rd, Cork. And can be followed on twitter at @vcortexworkers and on facebook. Best of luck to them

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    Mute Peter Murphy
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 9:47 AM

    The government were right to stop companies like vita cortex shafting the tax payers of Ireland. SIPTU need to stand up and be a union instead of sleeping with companies and government, these workers need assistance and need it now. SIPTU want to knock liberty hall and rebuild on the back of membership it’s time they put people first and get the fat cats out of siptu.

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    Mute Peter Andrew Stone
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 10:01 AM

    SIPTU are SCUM, They shafted us when the company was profitable and still is. There is only a very small group left out of hundreds still paying dues to them.

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    Mute Dermot Purcell
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 4:17 PM

    Peter murphy we the people of this country need more people like you in running this shit hole that they have turned it into and i mean the politicians

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    Mute Rodger O Waters
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 10:38 AM

    A national disgrace that these people can be treated like this, losing their livelihood is hard enough without their entitlements being attacked, where the hell is the Govt support,hand billions to foreign gamblers and allow our own to be treated so wrongly, every worker in the country should be supporting them-beware precedence.

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    Mute Leah O Reilly
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 3:23 PM

    Couldn’t agree more rodger.

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    Mute Yvonne Byrne
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 4:29 PM

    How right u are Roger if this kind of unfair treatment of people is allowed to happen in this case then it will continue to happen & then it will become the norm

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    Mute ap freely
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 10:43 AM

    Surely siptu can help these people out in the mean time financially. The guys at the top of these unions are making a small fortune and are out of touch with reality. How well they appear on the tv all the time shaking hands to be noticed. And why the he’ll do they love facial hair so much?

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    Mute Bernadette Dunne
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 10:21 AM

    The very best of luck to you all and stick with it

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    Mute Leah O Reilly
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 3:31 PM

    As the daughter of one of the workers I’d like to thank everyone for their kind words and support.my father worked forty years for cortex and gave his every waking hour to these people when he wasn’t home taking care of us.that was my dad work and family and he was happy as Larry,so to see him older now,not as physically healthy as he was in younger years ,having to worry and fight for what he’s owed sickening.so again thank you all and positive comments and support is what these workers can benefit from right now as they continue the fight that will make all of our future employers think twice before robbing us.cheers to the vita cortex workers for taking a stand for all of us.

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    Mute Avril Twomey
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 6:55 PM

    Leah, I used to work with your dad at cortex. He’s a lovely man and I saw how much he gave to the company – he doesn’t deserve to be in this position. I hope they get this sorted out soon.

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    Mute chicken ball ann
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 1:16 PM

    SIPTU my bollox !

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    Mute occulusdexter
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 11:59 AM

    Maybe SIPTU will campaign against Labour/Fine Gaels austerity measures that target the needy, the unemployed and the most vulnerable of ! Social leaders…… What social leaders leaders !!!!!!

    Social Democracy doesn’t change society equitably ! it tweeks it so as to appear to care !!!

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    Mute occulusdexter
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    Jan 2nd 2012, 12:00 PM

    that is “vulnerable of society” sorry !

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    Mute Kevin Nelson
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    Jan 3rd 2012, 12:31 AM

    Not sure whether to call Jack O Connor a puppet or a muppet because he does both so brilliantly. I too cancelled my subs about 4yrs ago. Emancipation!!

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