Veteran journalist John Ware told a London High Court on Monday that former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams’ repeated denials of IRA membership angered members of the group he interviewed — and that, based on decades of reporting, he believes Adams served for more than 30 years on the IRA’s army council and was “one of the single most influential strategists in the Republican movement.”
Ware’s evidence came in a civil trial brought by three victims of separate IRA bomb attacks in 1973 and 1996, who allege Adams was directly responsible. Adams has consistently denied being a member of the IRA.
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Ware, who has reported on security and the Troubles for the Sun, ITV and the BBC, said his assessment is grounded in conversations with former IRA members and police sources. He testified that a driving force behind former IRA operatives agreeing to speak to him for a documentary on Adams was their anger at his “brazen, unequivocal, and unambiguous denial of his role in the PIRA [Provisional IRA].”
In a witness statement read to the court, Ware said it “clearly grated with many of them that when Adams said that he strongly supported the armed struggle, his denial of actual PIRA membership allowed him to avoid taking personal responsibility for their actions.” He added that those he interviewed believed this was “a slippery way of Adams avoiding personal responsibility for the death and destruction caused by the PIRA’s violence, which he had either ordered in the operational phase of his PIRA membership, and later in his strategic phase as a member of the PIRA army council.”
Under questioning from a lawyer representing Adams, Ware confirmed he had no first-hand personal knowledge of who was responsible for the three bombings at the center of the case.
The court also heard about Ware’s previous reporting that exposed collusion between elements of the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries. Asked about past statements by MI5 and the British Army on that issue, Ware agreed he was on record as saying some of those official statements were not true. Later, Edward Craven KC told the court there had been a pattern of dissemination of false information by the British Army, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and MI5.
Ware said he was giving evidence for public-interest reasons, arguing it was “manifestly not the case that Gerry Adams was never a member of the IRA.” He told the court that “it would be wrong for history to record that Mr Adams was never a member of the IRA when it is perfectly clear to me, my colleagues and scores and scores of people” that he was.
The civil action, which does not carry the same burden of proof as a criminal trial, centers on whether Adams bears responsibility for attacks carried out in the early years of the Troubles and in the 1990s. Adams has long said he supported the republican cause but denied IRA membership throughout his political career.
Proceedings are set to resume this afternoon with evidence from a former senior military intelligence officer who served at British Army headquarters in Lisburn, County Antrim, during the Troubles.
Adams led Sinn Féin through peace talks that culminated in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the end of most paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland. Allegations over his past have trailed him for decades and have been repeatedly rejected by Adams, who has said such claims are unfounded.
The High Court trial continues.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
