BBC to seek more time on whether to appeal libel case

A court in Dublin has been told the BBC intends to apply for orders relating to Gerry Adams’ successful libel case against the corporation to be paused.

If the “stay” is granted, it would allow the BBC time to consider whether it will appeal against the verdict.

Mr Adams was awarded €100,000 (£84,000) damages, with the BBC also in line to pay his legal costs.

The court found the 76-year-old was defamed in a story about the murder of Denis Donaldson.

Mr Adams brought the case over an episode of BBC Northern Ireland’s “Spotlight” series in 2016, and an accompanying online article.

At a court hearing on Tuesday morning, a lawyer for the BBC told a judge that the corporation intended to apply for a “stay”.

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.