Court quashes Adams convictions

Ex-Sinn Fein leader welcomes judgment

COURTS: Former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has welcomed a decision by the UK’s highest court to overturn his convictions for attempting to escape from prison in the 1970s.

Mr Adams claimed the two 1975 findings of guilt were unsafe because his incarceration was not “personally considered” by a senior Government Minister.

FORMER SINN Fein leader Gerry Adams has welcomed a decision by the UK’s highest court to overturn his convictions for attempting to escape from prison in the 1970s after ruling his detention was unlawful.

Mr Adams took legal action claiming the two 1975 findings of guilt were unsafe because his incarceration was not “personally considered” by a senior government Minister.

Now 71, he attempted to flee the Maze high-security jail near Belfast – also known as Long Kesh internment camp – on Christmas Eve 1973 and again the following July. He was later sentenced to a total of four-and-a-half years.

Yesterday, he said: “Today is about the judgment from the heart of Britain’s own legal system, from their Supreme Court, saying that they acted unlawfully.”

Internment without trial was introduced as Northern Ireland descended into sustained intercommunal violence in the early 1970s. It is believed that nearly 2,000 men and women were imprisoned during its four-and-ahalf years of operation, Mr Adams said.

People were arrested suspected of paramilitary involvement but much of the intelligence was flawed, the historic record suggests.

At a Supreme Court hearing in November, Mr Adams’s lawyers

argued that, because the interim custody order (ICO) used to initially detain him in July 1973 was not authorised by the then-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Willie Whitelaw, his detention was unlawful and his convictions should be overturned.

Announcing the Supreme Court’s written judgment at a remote hearing yesterday, Lord Kerr – the former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland – said the court had unanimously allowed Mr Adams’s appeal and had quashed his convictions.

The judge said Mr Adams’s detention was unlawful because it had not been “considered personally” by Mr Whitelaw.

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

He said: “There is an onus on the British Government to identify and inform other internees whose internment may also have been unlawful.

“I consider my time in the prison ship Maidstone, in Belfast prison and in Long Kesh to have been in the company of many remarkable, resilient and inspiring people.”

Mr Adams went on to lead Sinn Fein for decades before retiring as president in 2018 and did not contest his seat in the Irish parliament during this year’s general election.

He added: “Our journey into the cages of Long Kesh and the other places came through torture centres, came through special courts, came through no courts at all.

“Remember what the British did – they set aside due process, they brought in special coercive legislation and what the Supreme Court judgment does today is to set that clearly in that context and to say it was unlawful.”

Remember what the British did – they set aside due process.

Former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.