Jury in libel case to be sent out on Thursday

The judge hearing Gerry Adams’ libel case against the BBC has told the jury he plans to send them out to consider their findings on Thursday morning.

Mr Justice Alexander Owens made his remarks as he resumed recapping the evidence.

He added that he did not think the jury of seven men and five women will be deliberating for long, as the issues are “quite easy” to determine.

They have up to five questions to answer.

Mr Adams, 76, is suing the BBC over a story in which an anonymous contributor alleged he sanctioned the murder of Denis Donaldson in 2006.

The former Sinn Féin leader denies any involvement.

The trial at the High Court in Dublin heard four weeks of evidence from 10 witnesses, including Mr Adams and reporter Jennifer O’Leary.

Mr Adams alleges he was defamed in a Spotlight programme broadcast in 2016 and an accompanying online article.

The programme was seen by an estimated 16,000 viewers in Ireland.

Mr Adams was a TD for Louth at the time.

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 worked for the police and MI5 inside Sinn Féin for 20 years.

In 2009, the Real IRA said it had murdered him.

Based on sources, Spotlight claimed the killing was the work of the Provisional IRA.

Mr Donaldson was interned without trial for periods in the 1970s and, after signing the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Féin appointed him as its key administrator in the party’s Stormont offices.

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

He was found dead in a small, rundown cottage in Glenties, County Donegal.

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

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

Mr Adams led the Sinn Féin delegation during peace talks that eventually brought an end to the Troubles after 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.