Gerry Adams ‘major, major player in war’, High Court told

Gerry Adams was a “major, major player in the war”, according to one of his former friends who was an IRA volunteer, the High Court has heard.

Brendan Hughes said the words during a recorded interview that was played in court to Mr Adams, who is giving evidence in defence of a legal claim brought against him by three victims of bombings in England by the Provisional IRA in the 1970s and 1990s.

John Clark, a victim of the 1973 Old Bailey bombing in London; Jonathan Ganesh, a 1996 London Docklands bombing victim; and Barry Laycock, a victim of the 1996 Arndale shopping centre bombing in Manchester, all allege that Mr Adams was a leading member of the Provisional IRA on those dates, including of its Army Council, and are seeking £1 in damages.

The former Sinn Fein president denies the allegations and is defending the claim, telling the court that he had “no involvement whatsoever” in the bombings and was never a member of the Provisional IRA.

Mr Hughes and Mr Adams were at Long Kesh prison together in the early 1970s and they were together the day before Mr Hughes died in 2008, the court heard.

On Wednesday, after playing the clip in which Mr Hughes calls Mr Adams a major player, Sir Max Hill KC, for the three bombing victims, said: “You were, weren’t you Mr Adams? And you deny it.”

Mr Adams said: “I was president of Sinn Fein for 35 years, deeply involved in the struggle.

“I defended the use of armed struggle when I thought it was appropriate.

“I’m not boasting but I don’t deny that I was a person of interest, of influence, and I used that influence as best I could to move from war to peace and that is, thankfully, what we are enjoying to this day.”

Sir Max also quoted a passage from the book Say Nothing, in which Mr Hughes gave an interview saying that Mr Adams’s IRA membership was common knowledge.

He said: “‘The British know it. The people on the street know it. The dogs know it on the street. And he’s standing there denying it’.”

Sir Max also described Mr Hughes as a “proud IRA volunteer until his death”.

Mr Adams replied: “I don’t know what his status was.

“It’s interesting that the direction from the claimants’ counsel was that I was helping, involved, in those armed actions and those decisions to bring the war to Britain, while those who were against what we were doing saw us as traitors.”

On Tuesday, Mr Adams told the court that while he did not distance himself from the Provisional IRA, he was glad the organisation had “left the stage” and that there were “dastardly things that were done that should never have been done”.

In his witness statement, he also said that he “had no involvement in or advance knowledge” of the three bombings.

Anne Studd KC, for the bomb victims, previously told the trial that being a member of Sinn Fein and a member of the Provisional IRA was “a distinction without a difference” for some individuals, including Mr Adams.

Ms Studd also told the court that Mr Adams had “a foot in each camp” of the military and political sides of the Irish Republican movement.

The barrister continued that Mr Adams was “directly responsible for and complicit in those decisions made by that organisation to detonate bombs on the British mainland in 1973 and 1996”.

The trial before Mr Justice Swift is expected to end later in March.