Gerry Adams passing names to police '˜breaches IRA rules'

Gerry Adams breached the republican movement's 'Bible' when he gave the names of four people to Garda investigating an IRA murder, it has been claimed.
Gerry Adams, pictured in 2010Gerry Adams, pictured in 2010
Gerry Adams, pictured in 2010

It emerged this week that the Sinn Fein president had e-mailed Garda Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan four names in February in connection with the murder of Portlaoise prison officer Brian Stack in 1983.

Three of them are Sinn Fein politicians – one of them in Northern Ireland – and the third is a senior IRA figure from the south.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Kenny Donaldson, spokesman for Innocent Victims United (IVU), said Mr Adams had breached core IRA values by his actions.

“The republican movement considers the IRA Green Book [the instruction manual handed to recruits] to be their ‘Bible’,” he said.

“It is clear that Mr Adams’ actions are in breach of that Green Book, in that he has informed on other republicans.

“Will the treatment he receives now differ from that which was served out to others who were deemed by their peers within republicanism to have committed an act of treachery, particularly given that Mr Adams is widely believed to have sat on the [IRA] Army Council which sanctioned such punishments?”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

IVU does not wish Mr Adams physical harm, he said, but rather his decision to pass names on to police should focus the Louth TD’s mind upon previous “court martials” meted out by the IRA.

Mr Adams denies being an IRA member.

Nevertheless, in 2014 he declared that he had “never disassociated myself from the IRA and I never will”.

Mr Adams insisted in his e-mail to Garda and subsequent comments that he was given the four names by Brian’s Stack’s son, Austin.

However Mr Stack has vehemently insisted that he gave no information to Mr Adams whatsoever.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Mr Stack said: “Gerry Adams said in an interview on LMFM radio this week that he had contemporaneous notes of conversations with myself and a senior IRA figure whom he asked to investigate my father’s murder.

“I would now call on him to hand these notes over to Garda urgently as they constitute key evidence in an ongoing murder probe.”

Sinn Fein declined to offer any comment in response to Mr Donaldson or Mr Stack.

Mr Adams said this week that he does not know if the politicians he named are being treated as “murder suspects”.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

He added: “These people clearly have their rights and have as I said, denied, at least those who I contacted, denied any involvement in this, and I have no reason, independent reason to doubt what they are saying.”

The IRA’s Green Book says: “The rule of thumb for all our actions... [is] that we must explain by whatever means we have at our disposal why we bomb, why we punish criminals, why we execute informers”.

In the case of Court Martial proceedings, it says the “death penalty...must be ratified by the A/C [Army Council]”.

In June the PSNI launched a probe into army agent ‘Stakeknife’ who is alleged to have led the campaign against informers in the IRA, and is now linked to some 50 murders.

TAOISEACH DEMANDS ADAMS COMES CLEAN:

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny has called on Mr Adams to come clean on what he knows about the murder of Brian Stack in 1983.

Speaking to reporters in California on Friday, Mr Kenny said that this was “another case of the full truth not being known” and added that Mr Adams seemed “to have known about this for a very long time”.

The Taoiseach said he would be prepared to meet Austin Stack to discuss the matter further.

Irish Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said “serious issues have been raised in the public domain by Deputy Adams recently which require answers”.

Related topics: