The BBC is facing a legal bill of more €3 million after a High Court jury in Dublin found the broadcaster defamed Gerry Adams in 2016, legal sources have said.
The former Sinn Féin leader claimed the Spotlight programme and article defamed him by falsely accusing him of giving “the final say” in the murder of MI5 informant Denis Donaldson at a cottage in Glenties, Co Donegal, in 2006. Mr Adams described the allegation during the trial as a “grievous smear”.
In finding he was defamed, the jury on Friday decided Mr Adams should be awarded €100,000 to vindicate and restore his reputation.
Speaking outside court, Mr Adams said he took the case “to put manners on the British Broadcasting Corporation”, which he said “upholds the ethos of the British state in Ireland”.
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“In my view, it’s out of sync, in many, many fronts, with the Good Friday Agreement,” he said.
Mr Adams called on Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan to meet Mr Donaldson’s family and he said there was an onus on Irish and British governments to “deal with these legacy issues as best we can”. He said he was “very mindful” of the bereaved family during the trial.
In a statement following the verdict, Jane Donaldson, daughter of the late Mr Donaldson, said Mr Adams had “trivialised” her family’s tragedy “by reducing events which damaged our lives to debate about damage to his reputation”.
He “prioritised his own financial and reputational interests over any regard for retraumatising my family”, she said.
Ms Donaldson called for a public inquiry, with a cross-Border element, into her father’s killing. “We don’t know who was involved, but we do need answers,” she said.
Adam Smyth, director of BBC Northern Ireland, said the implications of the jury’s decision were “profound”.
He thanked the jury, but expressed disappointment with the outcome.
“If the BBC’s case cannot be won under existing Irish defamation law, it’s hard to see how anyone’s could,” he said.
BBC Spotlight reporter Jennifer O’Leary said she had “nothing to hide, only sources to protect”.
The High Court trial lasted for 21 days and the costs must now be paid by the BBC, which is primarily funded by TV licence fee payers in Britain and Northern Ireland.
The jury decided the BBC was not entitled to the defence under the defamation law that the material was published in good faith or was fair and reasonable journalism.
Austin Stack, whose father Brian Stack was murdered in Dublin by the IRA in the 1980s, said he was “extremely disappointed” by the jury’s decision.
“It makes a mockery of the 1,800 people that the IRA and the republican movement killed. It is a complete mockery. It is like spitting on 1,800 graves, giving that man that money.”
Mr Stack’s father was shot outside the Boxing Stadium on a street of South Circular Road, Dublin, in 1983, and died 18 months after the shooting.
“The Sinn Féin people will tell you, move on,” he said. “But they have their commemorations, their memorials. They say everyone should be able to remember their dead, but that’s everybody bar the dead that the IRA created.”
Mr Stack was one of a number of witnesses the BBC wanted to call but the trial judge, Mr Justice Alexander Owens, decided were not relevant to what the jury had to decide.
Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin said “everybody has a right to their good name, and the allegation that was in the programme was very damaging, as today’s verdict shows, for Gerry’s reputation, particularly among his peers”.
“But the real issue here is that it highlights the fact that the Donaldson family still have not got the truth,” he said.
Democratic Unionist Party leader Gavin Robinson said the BBC had “significant questions to answer.”
