{"id":380112,"date":"2026-03-11T20:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T20:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/380112\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T20:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T20:50:08","slug":"significance-of-role-played-by-gerry-adams-in-ira-became-clear-only-after-1973-arrest-court-hears-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/380112\/","title":{"rendered":"Significance of role played by Gerry Adams in IRA became clear only after 1973 arrest, court hears \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The true significance of the role played by Gerry Adams<\/a> in the IRA<\/a> did not become clear until he was arrested in 1973 alongside leading IRA figures, a former British army officer has told a UK court.<\/p>\n

The retired officer, testifying from behind a screen and identified only as witness A, was giving evidence on the third day of the civil action against Adams in the Royal Courts of Justice in London<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The case is being taken by three victims of IRA bombings in England: John Clark, who was injured in the 1973 Old Bailey bombing; Jonathan Ganes, who was hurt in the 1996 London docklands bombing; and Barry Laycock, who was left with life-changing injuries from the Manchester Arndale 1996 bombing.<\/p>\n

They are seeking damages of \u00a31 from Adams and claim he was a member of the Provisional IRA, which he has always denied, and that he was a controlling force behind the bombings.<\/p>\n

Witness A told the court that Adams was among a group arrested in a raid on a home in the Lower Falls area of Belfast in July 1973.<\/p>\n

The group, which included leading IRA member Brendan Hughes, was brought to a nearby RUC station where Adams gave a false name.<\/p>\n

The former British soldier said he identified Adams even though they only had one photograph of him and quickly realised Adams was a more significant IRA figure than previously realised.<\/p>\n

Accusing witness A of \u201cdoubtful recollection\u201d, one of Adams\u2019s legal team, James Robottom, said the story of the arrest bore a remarkable similarity to an arrest of Adams the previous year that later became part of the recent \u201cSay Nothing\u201d series about Northern Ireland\u2019s Troubles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI resent the inference that I am making this up,\u201d said the former officer, who joined the British army in 1968 and served until 2004.<\/p>\n

Witness A said during one tour in Northern Ireland he had maintained \u201cthe integrity of intelligence files\u201d but acknowledged that he \u201cdid not collect\u201d intelligence and had not drawn on any original intelligence records linking Adams directly to the IRA when preparing his statement for the claimants in the case against him.<\/p>\n

Former British army colonel Richard Kemp also rejected a charge that he also had \u201cno direct evidence\u201d that linked Adams to IRA membership, or to any bombings.<\/p>\n

His judgment about Adams was based on long years of sight of intelligence reports, which would have been corrected over time if the allegation that he played a senior IRA role was wrong.<\/p>\n

Shane Paul O\u2019Doherty, who ran a letter-bombing campaign for the IRA in the 1970s, told the court that the last IRA member to testify against a senior IRA figure was stabbed in the face and eyes.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Doherty said he had expected a number of other former IRA members to give evidence in the case against Adams \u2013 without naming them in court \u2013 but later discovered he would be the only one.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Doherty said Eamon Collins was the last IRA man to give evidence in a civil case against a senior IRA figure and he was killed eight months after he testified in a libel case taken by Thomas \u2018Slab\u2019 Murphy in 1999 against The Sunday Times after it named him as the head of the IRA\u2019s northern command.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Doherty, giving evidence for a second day, insisted that neither Adams, nor anyone in Sinn F\u00e9in, nor anyone in the IRA, had ever questioned any detail he has published about the IRA in nearly a decade of blogging.<\/p>\n

However, he acknowledged that he had never met Adams during his time in the IRA or afterwards, and did not have direct evidence that the former MP and TD had been a member.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Gerry Adams case: Berets and woolly geansa\u00ed in focus as Reeling in the Years graces London courtOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

O\u2019Doherty rejected the assertion of Adams\u2019s lawyer Edward Craven that he had offered to give evidence in the civil action because he wanted to heighten his profile.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am here to support victims. I am not getting anything out of this; there is no other benefit for me,\u201d said O\u2019Doherty.<\/p>\n

He said he had never written specifically about Adams\u2019s role in the IRA until he heard him say in a Sky News interview that republicans would be honest with victims, but had then not followed through on it.<\/p>\n

The former Sinn F\u00e9in leader had not given \u201ca smidgen of the truth\u201d about his involvement in the Troubles.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Gerry Adams faces London court grilling over ties to IRA in high-profile civil caseOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

By contrast, O\u2019Doherty, who served 14 years of 30 concurrent life sentences for the 1976 letter-bomb campaign that injured 12 people, said he had met victims and shown repentance.<\/p>\n

In his witness statement, O\u2019Doherty described Adams as \u201csuffering from the \u2018last man standing\u2019 syndrome\u201d, by which he meant that since so many IRA leaders were now dead, \u201che alone bears both the prize and the burden\u201d of being the last prominent IRA leader \u201cto bear witness to its long and horrible campaign\u201d.<\/p>\n

The case continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The true significance of the role played by Gerry Adams in the IRA did not become clear until…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,9618,6,6439,11,12,130,15,16,40069,5,954,47,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-380112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-gerry-adams","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-irish-republican-army","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-london","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-martin-mcguinness","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-northern-ireland","23":"tag-sinn-fein","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories","26":"tag-world","27":"tag-world-news","28":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116212519682607670","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}