Former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams wins libel case against BBC over spy murder claim

LONDON — Gerry Adams, the former president of Sinn Fein, the Irish republican party, has won his libel case against the BBC over a documentary that claimed he sanctioned the 2006 murder of a British spy.

This was one of Ireland’s most high-profile lawsuits, pitting the U.K. national broadcaster against the man who transformed Sinn Fein, once the political wing of a group designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and U.K. — the Irish Republican Army — into a modern political party.

The jury at the High Court in Dublin returned a verdict after almost seven hours of deliberations, awarding Adams damages of 100,000 euros ($113,000). The four-week trial covered Adams’ alleged membership in the IRA and his role during the decades of Roman Catholic and Protestant fighting in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles.

Adams, 76, was the 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 episode of the BBC Northern Ireland Spotlight documentary series and in an accompanying online story. Adams said the BBC had wrongly claimed, based on an anonymous source, that he authorized the murder of Denis Donaldson, a British MI5 spy and former Sinn Fein official who was shot in the head in 2006.

The jury rejected the BBC’s defense that its journalism was fair, responsible and in the public interest.

Outside the court, Adams spoke to reporters in both Irish and English and said the case was about “putting manners on the BBC.” He said the BBC “upholds the ethos of the British state in Ireland” and that it “was out of sync” with the Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 peace deal that formally ended the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

“It hasn’t caught on to where we are on this island as part of the process, the continuing process, of building peace and justice, and harmony, and, hopefully, in the time ahead, unity,” he said.

The director of BBC Northern Ireland, Adam Smyth, told reporters outside the court he was disappointed by the verdict, saying, “We believe we supplied extensive evidence to the court of the careful editorial processes and journalistic diligence applied to this program and the accompanying online article.”

The BBC argued the claims made in the Spotlight documentary — that Adams had sanctioned the murder of Donaldson — were couched as allegations. Adams argued they were presented as fact.

Donaldson was shot dead in County Donegal months after admitting he had been a spy for British intelligence, working for the police and MI5 inside Sinn Fein for two decades.

The Spotlight program featured an anonymous source who claimed that Adams had sanctioned Donaldson’s killing, saying murders had to be approved by the leadership of the IRA. When the presenter of the program asked the anonymous source whom he was specifically referring to, he replied, “Gerry Adams. He gives the final say.” A main issue in the trial was Adams’ alleged past as an IRA leader — a claim that Adams has always rejected. 

No one has ever been convicted in connection with Donaldson’s death. The Real IRA — a dissident republican group that was born out of a split in the Provisional IRA, the group that participated in Northern Ireland’s peace process — claimed responsibility for his killing. An investigation by the Irish police is still ongoing.