Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has been freed without charge following five days of interrogation in Antrim police station.

The news broke hours before an 8pm deadline by which time he had to be charged over alleged links to a 1972 killing or allowed home.

However, it was reported that police are to pass a file of documents to the public prosecutor for a decision on whether the case may be pursued.

Mr Adams has always fiercely denied involvement in the death of Jean McConville.

Sinn Fein has accused opponents to within the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) of playing politics in the run-up to European elections at which the republican party had been expected to make gains north and south of the border.

Northern Ireland First Minister and Democratic Unionist party head Peter Robinson left himself open to charges of opportunism when he earlier scored sectarian points, accusing his republican counterparts of attempting to intimidate the police.

That followed senior SF politician Martin McGuinness’s warning that his party's continued support for the police service could depend on Mr Adams’s treatment at their hands.

Speaking at the unveiling of a peace mural of Mr Adams in Belfast on Saturday, Mr McGuinness said that some in the PSNI were “hostile” to the peace process.

He said: “In my view this is a failed replay of the effort in 1978 to charge Gerry Adams with IRA membership. 

“That case was based on hearsay, gossip and newspaper articles.

“It failed then and it will fail now.”