Civil lawsuit in London against Gerry Adams' alleged IRA role is dropped

LONDON — Three victims of bombings in England by the Irish Republican Army brought an end Friday to their damages claim against former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams.

On what was to be the last day of the two-week civil trial in the U.K.'s High Court in London, the three men's lawyer Anne Studd said the claim would be discontinued after “proceedings developed overnight."

She said the development was related to an argument around “abuse of process" and that her clients would not be liable for any costs related to Adams.

No further details were provided.

Adams was being sued in London's High Court for allegedly being directly responsible and complicit for decisions by the Provisional IRA to detonate bombs in England in 1973 and 1996. He was being sued for a symbolic 1 pound ($1.34) in damages.

Adams, 77, who gave evidence in the trial but who was not in court Friday, welcomed the decision by the claimants and said he had “nothing but sympathy” for them.

“But at times it verged upon a show trial, anonymous secret agents of the British state hiding behind the screen, others who were up to their necks in the subversion that the British state visited upon people of this part of the island of Ireland," he said in Belfast surrounded by Sinn Fein lawmakers.

Adams is one of the most influential figures of Northern Ireland's decades of conflict. 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, though some former colleagues have said he was one of its leaders.

The trio claimed Adams was a member of the IRA's decision-making Army Council and was as responsible as the men who planted the explosives during “the Troubles,” the three decades of violence involving Irish republican and British loyalist militants and U.K. soldiers. Some 3,600 people were killed, most in Northern Ireland, though the IRA also set off bombs in England.

John Clark, a police officer, had shrapnel lodged in his head and hand from the 1973 Old Bailey courthouse bombing in London. Jonathan Ganesh suffered psychologically from the 1996 London Docklands bombing. Barry Laycock was left disabled and struggled financially after the 1996 Arndale shopping center bombing in Manchester.

Laycock said he is “completely devastated” by the discontinuation of the case but that the “fair trial we sought, getting Mr. Adams into the dock for the first time, was achieved.”

In their evidence, the three men said they had not brought claims earlier because they did not realize they could do so, could not afford it, were suffering from mental or physical injuries and feared violent reprisals.

Adams was never charged with the bombings or arrested on suspicion of being connected to them. He was charged with being an IRA member in 1978, but the case was later dropped because of a lack of evidence.

Adams won a 100,000 ($116,000 at the time) libel verdict last year against the BBC over a claim in a television documentary that he authorized the killing of an informant inside the Irish republican movement.