Belfast Four: Gerry Adams's 'decent' people

Their solicitor complained that their acquittals have been "ignored or devalued" as they have been subjected to "trial by the media". Gerry Adams wants the Taoiseach to meet them, and he has agreed. So who are the Belfast four?

Padraic Wilson is in his 50s and lives in Belfast. He was accused of arranging IRA meetings around the time of Mairia's interrogation.

He is a close ally of Gerry Adams and was Sinn Fein's director of international affairs - during the court proceedings, his address was given as the Sinn Fein advice centre on the Falls Road. But media reports chronicle a past steeped in the IRA.

During the Troubles, he was sentenced to 24 years in the Maze, where he was IRA commander. He was released in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement. Mairia Cahill's father, Philip, told this newspaper that Wilson came to see him allegedly on behalf of the IRA leadership, to apologise for its handling of its internal investigation of her rapist.

Wilson was charged in 2012 with arranging IRA meetings after the Police Service of Northern Ireland launched an investigation into Mairia's case. But as his solicitor pointed out in a statement last week, there was no evidence against him "at all" and he was acquitted in May.

Seamus Finucane, also in his 50s, has been described as a community worker in West Belfast and a Sinn Fein member. He is a brother of Pat Finucane, the murdered Belfast solicitor. He was threatened by dissident republicans in recent years. Gerry Kelly, in condemning the threat, said that Finucane had spent his entire life "involved in republican activism."

Mairia Cahill and her father claim that Seamus Finucane was a key figure in the IRA's internal investigation into her rapist. Mairia claims he forced her to come face to face with her rapist and later told her parents that it was her rapist's word against hers. Finucane was also charged with arranging and assisting in IRA meetings, on foot of Mairia's complaints, and was also acquitted.

Last week, he posted a link on his Facebook page to a blog which described Mairia's alleged rapist as a man "whom many a 16-year-old would likely fancy."

Agnes "Maura" McCrory, who is in her 70s, is from Belfast and has been described as a lifelong republican. In addition to arranging IRA meetings, she was charged with unlawfully forcing Mairia Cahill to co-operate with an IRA investigation. She was acquitted on every charge. She was a former advice worker at the Falls Road Women's Centre, and a well-known figure in Belfast. She is a veteran of the anti-H Block campaign and marched for prisoners' rights in the 1970s.

Briege Wright, who is in her 50s, is also an advice worker in West Belfast. She features prominently in the republican movement. Her brother, Seamus Wright, was one of the first of the "disappeared". He was interrogated and shot by the IRA in 1972, on suspicion of being an informer.

Dolours Price, the late IRA bomber, claimed that Gerry Adams knew about the disappeared. But in an article in An Phoblacht, Briege Wright thanked Gerry Adams for helping her family achieve closure.

She wrote that the IRA had said why they killed and had identified the location where he buried his body, and accused Price of furthering a political agenda. Briege Wright was, like the others, acquitted on all charges.