The former chief of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, left the court in Dublin on Friday after winning one of the most prominent cases in Ireland.
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London – Gerry Adams, the former president of Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Party, won his defamation file against the BBC on a documentary which said that he had sanctioned the murder in 2006 of a British spy.
It was one of the most publicized prosecution of Ireland, opposing the British national diffuser to the man who transformed the Sinn Fein, formerly the political wing of a group designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Kingdom -the Irish republican army – in a modern political party.
The Dublin High Court jury made a verdict after almost seven hours of deliberations, granting Adams for 100,000 euros ($ 113,000). The four -week trial covered the alleged membership of Adams to IRA and its role during the decades of Roman and Protestant Catholic fights in Northern Ireland known as The problems.
Adams, 76, was president of Sinn Fein from 1983 to 2018. He has always denied being a member of the IRA militant group.
The jury decided that the BBC had defamed Adams in a 2016 BBC episode in Northern Ireland Highlight Documentary series and in an online story that accompanies it. Adams said the BBC had wrongly affirmed, on the basis of an anonymous source, that he had authorized the murder of Denis DonaldsonA British MI5 spy and former Sinn Fein manager who was shot in the head in 2006.
The jury rejected the defense of the BBC that his journalism was fair, responsible and in the public interest.
Apart from the court, Adams spoke with journalists in Irish and English and said that the case was to “put manners on the BBC”. He said that the BBC “confirms the ethics of the British state in Ireland” and that it “was out of synchronization” with the Good Friday agreementThe 1998 peace agreement which officially ended the problems in Northern Ireland.
“He did not understand where we are on this island within the framework of the process, the continuous process, the construction of peace and justice and harmony, and, let us hope, in the time to come, unity,” he said.
The director of the BBC in Northern Ireland, Adam Smyth, told journalists outside the court that he had been disappointed with the verdict, saying: “We believe that we have provided in -depth evidence to the court of meticulous editorial processes and the journalistic diligence applied to this program and on the online article.”
The BBC has argued the claims made in the Highlight Documentary – that Adams had sanctioned the murder of Donaldson – were formulated as allegations. Adams argued that they were presented as a fact.
Donaldson was shot dead in Donegal County for months after admitting that he had been a spy for British information, working for the police and the MI5 inside the Sinn Fein for two decades.
THE Highlight The program presented an anonymous source which said that ADAMS had sanctioned the murder of Donaldson, saying that murders should be approved by the management of IRA. When the presenter of the program asked the anonymous source to which he specifically referred, he replied: “Gerry Adams. He gives the last word.” A main problem with the trial was the alleged past of Adams as head of IRA – an assertion that Adams has always rejected.
No one was never sentenced as part of Donaldson’s death. The real IRA – a dissident republican group born from a split in provisional IRA, the group which participated in the peace process of Northern Ireland – claimed responsibility For his murder. An Irish police investigation is still underway.
