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Sinn Fein
Sinn Fein (/ʃɪn ˈfeɪn/ shin-FAYN) is an Irish republican political party active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves",although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone:Originating in the Sinn Fein organization founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970 after a split within the party (the other party is the Workers' Party of Ireland), and has been associated with the Provisional Irish Republican Army Gerry Adams has been party president since 1983.
Sinn Fein is currently the second-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, where it has four ministerial posts in the power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive, and the fourth-largest party in the Oireachtas, the parliament of the Republic. Sinn Fein also received a plurality of Northern Ireland votes in the 2010 United Kingdom general election, although the Democratic Unionist Party won more seats.
Police Service of Northern Ireland
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (Irish: Seirbhís Póilíneachta Thuaisceart Éireann, Ulster Scots: Polis Servis o Norlin Airlan) is the police force that serves Northern Ireland. It is the successor of the defunct Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) which, in turn, was the successor to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in Northern Ireland.
Although the majority of PSNI officers are still from the Protestant community, this dominance is not as pronounced as it was in the RUC because of affirmative action policies. The RUC was a highly militarized police force and played a key role in the violent conflict known as the Troubles. As part of the Good Friday Agreement, there was an agreement to introduce a new police force initially based on the body of constables of the RUC. As part of the reform, an Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland (the Patten Commission) was set up, and the RUC was replaced by the PSNI on 4 November 2001. The Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 named the new police force as the Police Service of Northern Ireland (incorporating the Royal Ulster Constabulary); shortened to Police Service of Northern Ireland for operational purposes.
All major political parties in Northern Ireland now support the PSNI. At first Sinn Fein, which represents about a quarter of Northern Ireland voters, refused to endorse the PSNI until the Patten Commission's recommendations were implemented in full. However, as part of the St Andrews Agreement, Sinn Fein announced its full acceptance of the PSNI in January 2007

Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty
A mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) is an agreement between two countries for the purpose of gathering and exchanging information in an effort to enforce public laws or criminal laws. First ones are very important in tax matters, in particular as part of international double taxation agreements wherein the parties agree to deliver information for tax purposes.
Modern states have developed mechanisms for requesting and obtaining evidence for criminal investigations and prosecutions. When evidence or other forms of legal assistance, such as witness statements or the service of documents, are needed from a foreign sovereign, states may attempt to cooperate informally through their respective police agencies or, alternatively, resort to what is typically referred to as requests for “mutual legal assistance”. The practice of mutual legal assistance developed from the comity-based system of letters rogatory, though it is now far more common for states to make mutual legal assistance requests directly to the designated “Central Authorities” within each state. In contemporary practice, such requests may still be made on the basis of reciprocity but may also be made pursuant to bilateral and multilateral treaties that obligate countries to provide assistance.
This assistance may take the form of examining and identifying people, places and things, custodial transfers, and providing assistance with the immobilization of the instruments of criminal activity. With regards to the latter, MLATs between the United States and Caribbean nations do not cover U.S. tax evasion, and are therefore ineffective when applied to Caribbean countries, which usually act as offshore "tax havens".
Assistance may be denied by either country (according to agreement details) for political or security reasons, or if the criminal offence in question is not equally punishable in both countries. Some treaties may encourage assistance with legal aid for nationals in other countries.
Many countries are able to provide a broad range of mutual legal assistance to other countries even in the absence of a treaty. In some developing countries, however, domestic laws can actually create obstacles to effective law enforcement cooperation and mutual legal assistance.
Gerry Adams
Gerard "Gerry" Adams (Irish: Gearóid Mac Ádhaimh; born 6 October 1948) is an Irish republican politician, president of the Sinn Féin political party, and the Teachta Dála (TD) for Louth since the 2011 general election.
From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he was an abstentionist Westminster Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast West. When he resigned in 2011 he had to accept a paid office of the Crown and was made Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead although this title was rejected by Adams.
He has been the president of Sinn Féin since 1983. Since that time the party has become the fourth-largest party in the Republic of Ireland, the second-largest political party in Northern Ireland and the largest Irish nationalist party in that region. In 1984, Adams was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt by several gunmen including John Gregg. From the late 1980s onwards, Adams was an important figure in the Northern Ireland peace process, initially following contact by the then-Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume and then subsequently with the Irish and British governments.
In 2005, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) indicated that its armed campaign was over and that it was exclusively committed to democratic politics. Under Adams, Sinn Féin changed its traditional policy of abstentionism towards the Oireachtas, the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland, in 1986 and later took seats in the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly.
In 2014, he was arrested for questioning and held for four days by the Police Service of Northern Ireland in connection with the abduction and murder of Jean McConville in 1972. He was freed without charge and a file was to be compiled and sent to the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland.
Murder of Jean McConville
Jean McConville (née Murray; 7 May 1934 – December 1972) was a woman from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who was kidnapped and shot dead by the Provisional IRA and secretly buried in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland in 1972. There were rumours that she was killed either for giving information to British forces, or because she had tended to a wounded British soldier on the street.
In 1999, the IRA finally acknowledged that it had killed McConville and eight others of the "Disappeared". It claimed she had been passing information about republicans to the British Army in exchange for money, and that a transmitter had been found in her apartment.An investigation by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland rejected this claim and the earlier rumours Since the Irish War of Independence, the various IRAs had a policy of "executing" those it believed to be informers. During the Troubles, both republicans and loyalists carried out such killings. As she was a widowed mother of ten, the McConville killing was particularly controversial. Her body was not found until 2003, and the crime has not been solved. The Police Ombudsman found that the Royal Ulster Constabulary did not begin to properly investigate the disappearance until 1995.

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