On an unseasonably sunny Friday afternoon, the Falls Road in west Belfast found itself bathed in golden light. <\/p>\n
Out of the sunshine stepped Gerry Adams<\/a>, the former Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> leader, who hours earlier had seen a civil case taken against him by three men injured in IRA bombings in England \u201cdiscontinued\u201d. <\/p>\n This was Adams\u2019s moment in the sun; addressing the reporters clustered on the pavement as Bobby Sands looked down on him from the mural behind, he said he welcomed the claimants\u2019 decision to drop the case. <\/p>\n He said he had attended \u201cout of respect\u201d for them but it \u201cverged on a show trial\u201d and \u201cshould never have been brought\u201d, he said. It was \u201cclearly … an unorthodox and strategically important political case taken for that purpose\u201d.<\/p>\n Standing before the microphones in a blue shirt topped with a padded blue gilet, a pin of the Palestinian flag at his throat, Adams was serious, unsmiling; this was no joyful triumph, his demeanour said, but an occasion for quiet dignity. <\/p>\n \u201cI never claimed this to be a victory,\u201d was his response to one reporter who questioned him about remarks by the claimants\u2019 lawyers that the outcome \u201cdoes not represent a victory for Mr Adams, but the reverse\u201d.<\/p>\n Adams said he had \u201cnothing but sympathy\u201d for the claimants, and had been \u201cmoved\u201d by the testimony of the two men who \u201ctold of their own personal difficulties and circumstances within the explosions and following the explosions\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cFamily members of mine have been killed, I\u2019ve been shot myself, so I know what it\u2019s like.\u201d<\/p>\n He was paying his own legal bill \u2013 \u201csupported by friends\u201d \u2013 because he was \u201cnever going to burden the claimants\u201d. <\/p>\n But he thought they had been \u201cbadly advised\u201d and asked, \u201cWhy did the lawyers decide to take this course of action?\u201d<\/p>\n