'A nasty piece of work': Former prison governor says Sinn Fein libel actions are effort to airbrush history 'and shut down anybody who is saying otherwise'

Tom Murtagh OBE, the former assistant governor of the Maze, governor of Armagh, and current president of the Retired Prison Officers' Association, published his own history of the prison in 2018.

It contained exactly the same assertion that Mr Kelly shot John Adams, but it met “with no challenge ... no challenge whatsoever” from Sinn Fein or anyone else.

“Their objective [Sinn Fein] is to shut down any criticism or any scrutiny. And I think they've unfortunately come unstuck,” said Mr Murtagh (pictured).

“They were trying to rewrite history, and trying to shut down anybody who is saying otherwise.

“[The judgment] is not before time. On this occasion, I think the issues are quite clear cut and I'm very, very happy that it's now been formally recognised.”

Mr Kelly also has a court case pending against another journalist, Ruth Dudley Edwards, over the same claim that he was the one who had shot prison warden John Adams.

In his written judgment on Monday, Master Bell noted that this claim is far from new, quoting – among others – from the official inquiry into the Maze breakout, carried out by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, James Hennessy, in 1984.

“Officer [Adams] was another who tried to frustrate the takeover,” it says.

“Before he could do so, Kelly fired two shots at him: he collapsed on the floor with a bullet through the head.”

The judge also said that a BBC documentary in 2008 had made the same claim, as did the Wikipedia page about the jailbreak.

“For some reason, however, it is only these two freelance journalists, Dr O’Doherty and Miss Edwards, whom Mr Kelly has singled out and pursued for defamation,” said the judge.

In his own 2018 book, 'The Maze Prison: A Hidden History of Chaos, Anarchy and Politics' Mr Murtagh had written that “most staff seemed to view Kelly as a cold individual [and] one officer, who knew him well, said that in his opinion he was 'a nasty piece of work' whose true nature is nothing like the persona he presents to the public today'.”