BBC report was attempted hatchet job on me, says Adams

Gerry Adams has described a BBC TV programme on the murder of an informer as an "attempted hatchet job" on him.

The former Sinn Féin president was giving evidence in his libel case against the BBC at the High Court in Dublin.

He claims the programme, and an accompanying online story, defamed him by alleging he sanctioned the killing of the former Sinn Féin official Denis Donaldson.

Mr Donaldson, who had worked for Sinn Féin, was shot dead in Donegal in 2006, months after admitting his role as a police and MI5 agent for 20 years.

Mr Adams denies any involvement.

In 2009, the Real IRA admitted killing Mr Donaldson.

The case is being heard by a jury at the High Court in Dublin and could last four weeks.

On Wednesday, the hour-long BBC NI Spotlight TV documentary was shown to the jury.

Under questioning by his own barrister, Mr Adams said he watched the programme at the time it was first broadcast in 2016, and recalled being "astonished" by its "poor journalism".

He said to suggest the Provisional IRA was involved in the murder of Mr Donaldson was "wholly contrary" to the instructions the paramilitary organisation had publicly given its members in 2005 to stand down because there was "a peaceful alternative to armed struggle".

Mr Adams also alleges he was defamed in a BBC online article based on the broadcast, which contained claims made by an anonymous source.

He held up a printed copy of the online article and said there "there was an arrogance involved" in the BBC's response to requests from his legal representatives for it to be taken off the website.

He said the BBC had "given no reason" why the article was still available online nine years later.

During pre-trial hearings, the BBC argued the broadcast and publication were put out in good faith and concerned a matter of public interest.

It stated the reports constituted responsible journalism as a result of careful investigation.

Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Adams told the libel jury he was "shocked" when told Mr Donaldson had been shot dead at a remote cottage in Donegal.

He said he learned of the killing in a phone call from the then Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain.

"The Sunday World carried the story a few weeks before and there was a photograph outside cottage," Mr Adams said.

"I presumed he had moved and hadn't left himself vulnerable, but unfortunately he didn't.

"I think Denis Donaldson was a victim of the conflict.

"The fact his family is still struggling to get the truth, even an inquest, is deeply troubling."

Mr Adams also spoke about the outset of the Northern Ireland Troubles, when "the entire situation moved from a civil rights struggle to a conflict situation".

He spoke about his internment without trial in the 1970s and the 1981 Republican hunger strikes, by which time he was Sinn Féin vice-president.

One of those who died on hunger strike was Bobby Sands, who was elected an MP months earlier.

"A number of us were trying to revamp Sinn Féin," Mr Adams said.

"What Bobby's [Sands] election did was accelerated that process.

"That was the commencement of the Sinn Féin electoral strategy, but also the notion you could go forward peacefully."

Mr Adams then talked about the development of the peace process.

"The IRA was legitimate response to [British] occupation. That's not to say everything they did was legitimate, it wasn't."

He said he told a priest, Fr Alec Reid: "If we want the IRA to stop, we have to produce an alternative.

"That became my mantra."

Mr Adams said he was "shocked" at how long things took.

"It was too long and all the time there were people being killed - there were atrocities, including on the republican side," he said.

Mr Adams is due to continue giving evidence when proceedings resume on Thursday morning.

The case continues.

Mr Adams was the president of republican party Sinn Féin from 1983 until 2018.

He served as MP for Belfast West from 1983 to 1992 and again from 1997 until 2011 before sitting as a TD (Teachta Dála) in the Dáil (lower house of Irish parliament) between 2011 and 2020.

Mr Adams led the Sinn Féin delegation during peace talks that eventually brought an end to the worst violence of the Troubles with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

He was detained in the early 1970s when the government in Northern Ireland introduced internment without trial for those suspected of paramilitary involvement.

Mr Adams has consistently denied being a member of the IRA.

Mr Donaldson was once a key figure in Sinn Féin's rise as a political force in Northern Ireland but he was found murdered in 2006 after it emerged he had been an informer.

He was interned without trial for periods in the 1970s.

After the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Féin appointed Mr Donaldson as its key administrator in the party's Stormont offices.

In 2005 he confessed that he was a spy for British intelligence for two decades, before disappearing from Belfast.