LONDON — Former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams was accused in a London court Monday of being a leader in the Irish Republican Army responsible for three of the paramilitary group’s suspected bombings in England.
Adams is being sued in London’s High Court for allegedly being directly responsible and complicit for decisions by the Provisional IRA to detonate bombs in England in 1973 and 1996.
“The defendant carefully draws a distinction between being a member of ‘the Army’ and being a member of Sinn Féin,” attorney Anne Studd said. “That was a distinction without a difference.”
Studd represents three men wounded in the bombings.
The allegation against Adams is an old one, but this is the first time a court is being asked to decide if it’s true.
Adams is one of the most influential figures of Northern Ireland ’s decades of conflict. He led the IRA-linked political party Sinn Féin between 1983 and 2018 and helped broker the 1998 Good Friday peace accord. He has always denied being an IRA member, though some former colleagues have said he was one of its leaders.
“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,” Adams said after the opening day of the trial.
The claimants are seeking vindication — not money. Adams is being sued for the nominal sum of 1 pound .
The trio claims Adams was a member of the IRA’s decision-making Army Council and was as responsible as the men who planted the explosives during “the Troubles,” the three decades of violence involving Irish republican and British loyalist militants and U.K. soldiers. Some 3,600 people were killed, most in Northern Ireland, though the IRA also set off bombs in England.
John Clark, a police officer, had shrapnel lodged in his head and hand from the 1973 Old Bailey courthouse bombing in London. Jonathan Ganesh suffered psychologically from the 1996 London Docklands bombing. Barry Laycock was left 50% disabled, suffered emotionally and struggled financially from the 1996 Arndale shopping center bombing in Manchester.
“There is no doubt that the defendant contributed to the peace in Northern Ireland, but the claimants say that on the evidence, he also contributed to the war,” Studd said.
Adams, who is expected to testify in his defense during the nonjury trial due to conclude next week, “emphatically, unequivocally and categorically denies that he was ever a member of the IRA,” attorney Edward Craven said.
Adams was never charged with the bombings or even arrested on suspicion of being connected to them, Craven said.
The 77-year-old was charged with being an IRA member in 1978, but the case was later dropped because of a lack of evidence.
Adams won a 100,000 libel verdict last year against the BBC over a claim in a television documentary that he authorized the killing of an informant inside the Irish republican movement.
Craven said the claimants had a mountain to climb to prove their case and they had not even arrived at the foothills.
He said that Adams sympathized with and shared the IRA’s goals and sought to justify their actions, though he didn’t support all those acts.
“That makes him, in the eyes of some people, a deeply controversial figure,” Craven said. “It does not mean he was factually responsible for the bombings.”
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