Gerry Adams has a reputation among the public for being a member of the Provisional IRA’s decision-making body, known as the army council, a senator and former attorney general has told the High Court.
Michael McDowell also said that members of the Irish government, in the time following the Belfast Agreement in 1998, considered the former Sinn Féin president an army council member, based on intelligence briefings.
Mr McDowell was giving evidence in the fourth week of a civil trial of Mr Adams’s defamation action against the BBC.
Mr Adams claims a BBC Spotlight programme and a related article published in 2016 defamed him by falsely accusing him of sanctioning British agent Denis Donaldson’s killing at a cottage in Glenties, Co Donegal, in 2006.
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Mr Adams’s lawyers argue his reputation is that of a “peacemaker”, and the allegation represents an “unjustified attack” on his reputation. He insists he had no involvement with the death for which dissident republicans claimed responsibility in 2009.
The BBC denies it defamed Mr Adams.
On Wednesday, asked by BBC senior counsel Paul Gallagher about Mr Adams’s reputation among the public, Mr McDowell said he is known as a politician who was a leading member of the IRA and active in the IRA during its period of “armed struggle”.
Mr McDowell, who was called by the BBC to give evidence, said Mr Adams was reputed to have been a chief negotiator between the provisional movement and the British government in the 1970s and, thereafter, he was reputed to have a role in the Belfast IRA as its officer commanding.
Following this he was believed to have become a member of the IRA’s army council, Mr McDowell said.
He said that during the peace process, immediately following the Belfast Agreement in 1998, the view of those in the Irish Government, based on intelligence briefings, was that Mr Adams was a leading member of the army council, along with Sinn Féin politicians Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris.
John Kerr, barrister for Mr Adams, put it to Mr McDowell has made no secret of his hatred of Sinn Féin.
In response, Mr McDowell said: “I abominate what they have done in the past and what they did do in the past.
“I also abominate their dishonesty about what they did do and their willingness to lie about that,” he said.
Mr McDowell agreed Sinn Féin and Mr Adams played a key role in negotiations leading up to the Belfast Agreement. However, he said Mr Adams represented himself “entirely falsely” as a go-between for the IRA and the political process, when in fact “he was a dominant character within the IRA at the time”.
Mr McDowell said he gives “the credit of common sense” to Mr Adams for recognising that the IRA had been defeated.
Earlier, Ann Travers, whose sister Mary was killed by the IRA in April 1984, said Mr Adams’s reputation was that of a “warmonger”.
Ms Travers told the jury that while walking from Mass, her sister was killed and her father Thomas, a magistrate, was shot six times. She said there was also an attempt on her mother’s life. She said she is an advocate for South East Fermanagh Foundation, a support group for victims of violence with about 5,000 members.
She said victims’ groups see Mr Adams as a senior member of the IRA and of Sinn Féin and who was “heavily involved” with the murder of innocent people.
Under cross-examination from Declan Doyle SC, for Mr Adams, Ms Travers said Mr Adams has “cast a long and dark shadow” over her life, and said she “would even have a fear of him”.
She disagreed with the suggestions Mr Adams’s reputation is that of a peacemaker.
She did not agree that there would be no peace in Northern Ireland were it not for Mr Adams.
Trevor Ringland, a solicitor and former Irish rugby international, was also called by the BBC on Wednesday, and said Mr Adams had a reputation as a “peacetaker”, rather than a “peacemaker”.
Mr Doyle, for Mr Adams, noted Mr Ringland was previously associated with the Ulster Unionist Party and previously joined the Northern Ireland branch of the UK Conservative Party.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Alexander Owens.
