Dublin, (EFE).- The former president of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, has been the victim of an “unjustified attack” by the British broadcaster BBC and has seen his reputation as a “peacemaker” damaged during Northern Ireland’s past conflict, his defense team told the High Court in Dublin on Tuesday.
Adams, 76, is suing the BBC for defamation after it accused him in a 2016 broadcast of ordering the murder of his party colleague Denis Donaldson, who was shot dead in 2006 after itting he had spied for British security forces for over two decades.
At the start of the trial today, Adams’ lawyers argued that the Spotlight television program, produced by the BBC in Northern Ireland, had committed a “journalistic error” by making serious accusations based solely on “a single anonymous source.”
“The anonymous source was never informed that Gerry Adams denied involvement. The BBC failed to carry out the necessary checks. The program should have warned that the accusation was unverified. It was reckless journalism,” said lawyer Tom Hogan.
He recalled that “many people have said things” about Adams, who has always denied hip in the now-defunct Irish Republican Army (IRA), despite leading Sinn Féin, widely seen as the political wing of the paramilitary group, for 34 years.
The nationalist leader “will not let his accusation stand,” Hogan emphasized, noting that it took Adams “a lifetime” to build his reputation as a “peacemaker” and that “this case is, in essence, an unjustified attack on his role in history.”
Donaldson, who confessed in 2005 to having spied for British intelligence services for over 20 years, was expelled from Sinn Féin when his double life was revealed and went into hiding in a remote cottage in County Donegal, where he was executed by unknown assailants in Apr. 2006.
Initially, his murder was believed to have been carried out by the IRA, but three years later, the dissident group Real IRA claimed responsibility for the killing of the party’s former head of istration at Stormont, the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly. EFE
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