Video - Gerry Adams press conference following release

SINN FÉIN leader Gerry Adams told a press conference in Belfast that focus now needs to be on the future of the Peace Process following his release without charge after four days in detention at Antrim PSNI station.

Following sustained criticism of the PSNI for what hs been percevied as a politically-motivated arrest, Adams said he does not deserve any "special treatment" but added it is the PSNI's duty to be fair and impartial.

He criticised the use of "pernicious coercive legislation to deal with a legacy issue" and the decision to arrest him during the height of an election campaign, despite him contacting the PSNI two months ago.

Gerry Adams said the questions he was asked during his questioning were about his life from when he was as young as 18-months-old:

"During my interrogations much was made by my interrogators about my time in the Civil Rights struggle in the 1960s, my arrest and detention in Palace Barracks, in Long Kesh and in the peace talks in 1972.

"Newspaper articles, photographs of Martin McGuinness and I at Republican funerals, books and other open source material were used as the basis of the accusations made against me.

"Much of the interrogations concerned the so-called Belfast Project conceived by Paul Bew, University lecturer and a former advisor to former Unionist leader David Trimble, and run by Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre as part of Boston College."

He described Moloney and McIntyre as "opponents of the Sinn Féin leadership and our peace strategy" and noted that many of the interviewees were hostile to the Peace Process.

Finally, Adams said:

"Let me be clear. There is only one way for our society to go and that is forward.

"Yes deal with the past. Yes deal with victims but the focus needs to be on the future. That is the road we are on."