A senior Sinn Féin member arrested last week over a murder linked to IRA members has said the organisation has “gone away” and is “not coming back”.
Bobby Storey was one of three leading republicans questioned and then released without charge over the murder of former IRA man Kevin McGuigan Sr.
Their detention intensified a political crisis in Northern Ireland.
First Minister Peter Robinson quit the ruling executive along with three other Democratic Unionist Party ministers.
Mr McGuigan Sr’s murder caused a political row after Northern Ireland’s police chief said members of the IRA had a role in the murder, and that the organisation still existed.
He said the organisation was still in existence and added that it was committed to politics and is not engaged in terrorism.
Mr Storey, Sinn Féin’s northern chairman, was speaking in west Belfast alongside senior party colleagues including Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.
He said the IRA “has gone, stood down”, had put its “arms beyond use” and was “not coming back”.
He said unionists viewed the IRA as a “caterpillar” that is still in existence, but that it is “now a butterfly which has flown away”.
“Not a shred” of evidence or intelligence was presented to him that would justify his arrest over the murder of Mr McGuigan last month, he said.
Those involved in the killing are criminals and enemies of peace, he added.
