Former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams is “as culpable” for IRA bombings on the UK mainland “as the individuals who planted and detonated the devices”, the High Court in London heard yesterday.
Three men injured in IRA attacks in London are bringing a civil case against Adams, who has long denied being a member of the IRA or participating in its operations during the Troubles. He arrived at the Royal Courts of Justice wearing a bulletproof vest.
A lawyer representing the three claimants said they planned to demonstrate Adams was “intrinsically involved” in the decision-making that led to the bombings.
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What is the claimants’ case?
Adams, 77, is being sued by three men who were injured in the 1973 Old Bailey bombing, and attacks on London’s Docklands and Manchester’s Arndale Centre in 1996.
In her opening statement, Anne Studd, representing the claimants, told the court that Adams was “directly responsible for and complicit” in the group’s terror attacks in the UK. She said the claimants would make the case that Adams “was an instrumental force” in the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland and the “ArmaLite and the ballot box” strategy of combining legitimate political activity with paramilitary violence.
While “there is no doubt that the defendant contributed to the peace in Northern Ireland”, the claimants will allege “he also contributed to the war”, she said.
On day one of the trial, the court heard that Bill Clinton, who was US president at the time of the Good Friday Agreement, believed there was “credible evidence” that Adams was involved at “the highest level” in the IRA in the 1990s.
What has Adams said?
In his opening submission, Adams’ lawyer, Edward Craven, told the court that Adams “emphatically, unequivocally and categorically” denies being involved in the attacks or being a member of the IRA, and blamed suggestions to the contrary on “people with an axe to grind”.
Adams, who will testify next week, has promised to “robustly challenge” what he described as “unsubstantiated hearsay statements”. Speaking outside the High Court after the first day of the trial, he said: “The only thing that I am guilty of is being an Irish republican committed to ending British rule in our country and seeking to unite the people of Ireland on the basis of freedom, equality, peace and solidarity.”
Last year, Adams won a defamation action against the BBC over a 2016 programme that claimed he had sanctioned the murder of an MI5 informant in 2006. During the four-week trial that examined his alleged membership of the IRA, he insisted under oath that joining the group was “not a path that I took”. The jury at Dublin’s High Court found that the BBC had not acted in good faith or in a fair and reasonable way. It awarded Adams €100,000 (£84,000) in damages.
Because the current High Court case is a civil rather than a criminal trial, a verdict will be decided by the judge “on the basis of probabilities”, rather than the higher “beyond reasonable doubt” threshold applied in a criminal court. If Adams loses, he will have to pay symbolic “vindicatory” damages of £1 each to the three claimants.