A SENIOR republican whose arrest over an IRA-linked murder escalated the current political crisis in Northern Ireland has accused unionists of using his ‘wrongful detention’ to try to pull down power sharing.
Sinn Fein northern chairman Bobby Storey and two other well-known republicans were taken into custody on Wednesday. They were released without charge on Thursday night.
While they were being questioned by detectives, First Minister Peter Robinson stepped down and three DUP ministers quit their roles in the Executive.
The DUP mass resignation threat and subsequent walkout was prompted by the three arrests, amid claims the investigation into the shooting of former IRA man Kevin McGuigan had reached into the senior levels of Sinn Fein.
Commenting publicly on his arrest for the first time, Mr Storey condemned the reaction of Unionist parties to his arrest.
"The behaviour of the unionist parties, who have cynically used my arrest to pull down the political institutions, has been nothing short of disgraceful.
"They have succeeded only in holding the political process to ransom and providing encouragement to the dissident elements and the criminals who murdered Jock Davison and Kevin McGuigan."
Mr Storey said he had "serious concerns" over his arrest, and the timing of it and claimed "not a shred of evidence or intelligence" was presented to him during questioning.
But he backed the PSNI as the appropriate body to investigate the two murders.
The republican veteran said the "IRA has gone away" and was "not coming back".
"The people who murdered both men are criminals and enemies of the Sinn Fein peace strategy," he said.
"Every effort must be made to ensure they are brought before the courts to face due process."
PSNI chief constable George Hamilton has said there is no evidence IRA leadership sanctioned the McGuigan murder. However, he said that structures of the organisation still exist, albeit for political, not terror, purposes.
Mr Storey said he agreed with the assessment there was no IRA military footing, but he added: "Where I differ from the chief constable, is there is no role for the IRA, the IRA has finished, the IRA has gone.
"I think the chief constable and other perspectives out there see this in terms of the IRA being the caterpillar that's still there, where I think it's moved on, it's become a butterfly, it's flew away, it's gone, it's disappeared and they need to evolve to that as well.
"They need to move on to a different level of where this has got to. Not only is there no IRA, there is no logic for an IRA. The primary republican organisation and the primary republican morality, credibility and representativeness is in the Sinn Fein party."
