{"id":388583,"date":"2026-03-16T22:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T22:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/388583\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T22:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T22:27:09","slug":"ira-members-astonished-at-gerry-adamss-brazen-denial-of-role-in-organisation-court-hears-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/388583\/","title":{"rendered":"IRA members \u2018astonished\u2019 at Gerry Adams\u2019s \u2018brazen\u2019 denial of role in organisation, court hears \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Members of the IRA<\/a> gave interviews to the BBC in the early 1980s because of \u201ctheir complete and utter astonishment\u201d at Gerry Adams<\/a>\u2019s \u201cbrazen, unequivocal and unambiguous denial of his role\u201d in the organisation, a court has heard.<\/p>\n

The charge was made by the 40-year veteran of reporting on Northern Ireland, British journalist John Ware, during the fifth day of evidence in a civil action against Adams.<\/p>\n

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

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

\u201cTo the best of my recollection, the driving force behind IRA members wanting to give these interviews was Adams\u2019s constant denialism,\u201d said Ware in his witness statement in the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt clearly grated with many of them that when Adams said that he strongly supported the armed struggle, his denial of actual PIRA membership allowed him to avoid taking personal responsibility for their actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

They believed, he said, that \u201cit was a slippery way\u201d for Adams to avoid taking personal responsibility for IRA attacks that he had ordered during his time as a senior IRA commander, or later a member of its army council. <\/p>\n

In their view, \u201cAdams had seemingly elevated himself to a higher moral plane than the IRA, when it was they who were sacrificing life and limb \u2013 as they would see it \u2013 for a cause Adams was leading\u201d, Ware\u2019s statement read.<\/p>\n

Facing questioning from Adams\u2019s barrister, Edward Craven, Ware insisted that he believed then and now that information given to him about Adams\u2019s role by a senior RUC special branch officer, Brian Fitzsimons, in 1983, was true.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Troubles seem so far away at times as Gerry Adams civil case continuesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The BBC<\/a> journalist rejected Craven\u2019s charge that he had decided to give evidence in the civil claim by Clark, Ganesh and Laycock solely because he wanted to be central to events. \u201cAbsolutely not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Instead, Ware said he was there because there was an obligation on journalists who believe \u201cin an objective truth\u201d that the history books would not record after this case that Adams was not, and had never been, a member of the IRA.<\/p>\n

That, he said, is objectively untrue, and that truth is known by members of the IRA, by those who served in the RUC and the British Army and by scores of journalists who covered the Troubles in depth.<\/p>\n

He insisted that senior Sinn F\u00e9in figure Danny Morrison accepted the premise that Adams was a member of the IRA when Ware and he spoke on the margins of the Sinn F\u00e9in ardfheis in Dublin in 1983 after Adams had become president of Sinn F\u00e9in: \u201cI can remember where the conversation took place in the Mansion House [in Dublin],\u201d Ware said.<\/p>\n

He acknowledged he did not have evidence linking Adams directly with the Old Bailey bombing in 1973, the Canary Wharf bombing in 1996 and the Manchester Arndale attack a few months later.<\/p>\n

During several meetings in 1983 with Fitzsimons, Ware said the head of RUC special branch in Belfast had told him that the IRA\u2019s decision to bomb commercial targets \u2013 including the La Mon hotel in 1978 \u2013 had been Adams\u2019s idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intelligence reports that Fitzsimons read to me detailed how the commercial bombings were Adams\u2019s idea; he was the main proponent of destabilising the economy this way, because it aligned with the PIRA\u2019s campaign of investment prevention.\u201d <\/p>\n

In a later meeting with Fitzsimons and detective chief superintendent Bill Wilson in October 1983, the two RUC officers said the murder of Louis Mountbatten in the sea off Mullaghmore, Co Sligo had been cleared by Adams.<\/p>\n

\u201cIntelligence showed that the 1979 killing of Lord Louis Mountbatten could not have been done without the knowledge and approval of Adams, [Ivor] Bell and [Martin] McGuinness,\u201d his witness statement records.<\/p>\n

Adams \u201crightly claims credit\u201d for the role that he played in helping to bring about the IRA ceasefires, the Belfast Agreement and the peace process, but he has excised from his memory \u201cthat he also started all of it\u201d, said Ware.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m told that Adams relinquished his role on the army council in 2005 when there was a final agreement with the PIRA on disarmament. I\u2019ve been told this by colleagues, former members of the PIRA, and police sources. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn short, my understanding is that Adams was on the Army Council from the late 1970s until the PIRA wound up as a military body in 2005. The PIRA still exists today, structurally, but it is more notional than anything else.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if Adams has persuaded himself that he wasn\u2019t in the PIRA by virtue of his strategic and leadership role, as opposed to being the person who pulled the trigger or planted the bombs, as it were.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy only reason for referencing this is because Adams does keep insisting that he was never in the IRA, while the rest of us are metaphorically open-mouthed at his chutzpah, given the sheer weight of evidence from his colleagues, comrades and other sources, and what he has written as Brownie [a pseudonym used in articles],\u201d Ware said. <\/p>\n

Retired brigadier Ian Liles, who was posted to Northern Ireland over several years while in the British army, told the court Adams signed off on operations of the Provisional IRA in the mid to late 1990s, such as the 1996 Manchester truck bombs.<\/p>\n

The former British intelligence officer alleged Adams \u201cwould have authorised all attacks on the mainland at that time, as they were cleared through the army council [of the PIRA], of which he was an active member\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is simply no way that the bombings in 1996 could have happened without the oversight and approval of Adams,\u201d Liles (72) told the court.<\/p>\n

Cross-examined by Adams\u2019s barrister, James Robottom, Liles denied he was \u201cspeculating\u201d about Adams\u2019s membership of the army council by 1996. He refuted Robottom\u2019s suggestion he was not an independent witness or that he was \u201chostile\u201d to Adams.<\/p>\n

The case continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members of the IRA gave interviews to the BBC in the early 1980s because of \u201ctheir complete and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,9618,6,19,17,6439,11,12,177480,15,16,5,47,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-388583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-gerry-adams","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-irish-republican-army","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-louis-mountbatten","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-sinn-fein","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116241212694353616","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388583","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=388583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}