London — The hearing against three victims of the Irish Republican Army bombing in England on their damages claims ended on Friday Former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams.
As the final day of a two-week civil trial approaches at the UK High Court in London, Anne Studd, a lawyer for the three men, said the claim would be dropped after “proceedings developed overnight”.
He said the development was related to an argument involving an “abuse of process” and that his client would not be liable for any costs related to Adams.
No further details were given.
Adams was The case was filed in the High Court of London For allegedly being directly responsible for and complicit in the Provisional IRA’s decisions to carry out bombings in England in 1973 and 1996. He was being sued for a symbolic 1 pound ($1.34) in damages.
Adams, 77, who testified at the trial but was not in court on Friday, welcomed the claimants’ verdict and said he had “nothing but sympathy” for them.
“But sometimes it turns out to be a sham trial, with anonymous secret agents of the British state hiding behind the screen, others who were up to their necks in the attack carried out by the British state on the people of this part of the island of Ireland,” he said in Belfast surrounded by Sinn Féin MPs.
Adams is one of the most influential figures Northern Ireland Decades of struggle. He led the IRA-linked political party Sinn Féin between 1983 and 2018, and helped broker the 1998 Good Friday peace accord. He has always denied being an IRA member, although some former colleagues have said he was one of its leaders.
The three claimed that Adams was a member of the IRA’s decision-making military council and was as responsible as the people who planted the explosives. During the “Troubles”,” three decades of violence that involved Irish Republican and British loyalist militants and UK troops. About 3,600 people were killed, the majority in Northern Ireland, although the IRA also carried out bombings in England.
John Clark, a police officer, was hit in the head and arm by shrapnel from the 1973 bombing of London’s Old Bailey Courthouse. Jonathan Ganesh suffered psychologically from the 1996 London Docklands bombing. Barry Laycock was left disabled and struggling financially after the Arndale Shopping Center bombing in Manchester in 1996.
Laycock said he was “deeply disappointed” with the closure of the case, but “the fair trial we sought has been achieved by putting Mr Adams in the dock for the first time.”
In their evidence, all three men said they had not brought claims earlier because they did not realize they could do so, could not afford it, were suffering mental or physical injuries and feared violent retaliation.
Adams was never charged with the bombings or arrested on suspicion of being involved with them. He was accused of being an IRA member in 1978, but the case was later dropped due to lack of evidence.
adams Won a defamation judgment of $100,000 ($116,000 at the time) against last year BBC In a television documentary over claims that he had authorized the murder of an informer inside the Irish Republican movement.
