Party’s former leader, who is being sued for symbolic damages, says opponents have repeatedly tried to conflate Sinn Féin and IRA
Gerry Adams has told the high court that opponents of Sinn Féin have repeatedly sought to conflate the political party he led with the IRA, as he denied ever being a member of the Irish Republican Army.
Giving evidence in London watched by victims of IRA bombings, the 77-year-old, credited with helping to bring about the peace process that ended the Troubles, said he had “never been a senior, let alone most senior, figure in the IRA”.
Adams is being sued for symbolic “vindicatory” damages of £1 each by John Clark, Jonathan Ganesh and Barry Laycock. They claim he was an IRA member, sat on its army council and was culpable for the 1973 Old Bailey bombing, and the London Docklands and Manchester bombings in 1996 in which they were respectively injured.
Adams, who entered the witness box wearing a shamrock and a badge of the Palestinian flag, said in his witness statement: “To be clear, membership of the political party, Sinn Féin, does not equate to membership of the IRA.
