A suspected leader of the once-powerful Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorist group attended an event in New York City Monday honoring Democratic presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton.
Gerry Adams, president of the Irish republican Sinn Fein party and long-suspected onetime leader of the IRA, attended Clinton’s induction into the Irish America magazine Hall of Fame in New York Monday afternoon.
Clinton was inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame for her supposedly prominent role in her husband’s work in the Northern Ireland peace process in the 1990s, which relied on the participation of Irish nationalist Adams and his colleague Martin McGuinness.
Adams had a meeting scheduled this week in Washington, D.C. with the U.S. State Department, which Clinton used to head, but the State Department mysteriously cancelled.
Adams has denied IRA involvement, but his denials have been largely met with shrugging disbelief. A former IRA commander accused Adams of ordering at least one murder during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Adams was detained and questioned by police last year in connection to a murder investigation dating back to 1972. Adams told the press that he does not dissociate himself from the IRA, but that the organization is no more.
The Irish America Hall of Fame ceremony was organized by Clinton donor Niall O’Dowd, a prominent Irish journalist.