Editorial: IRA murders have not had proper scrutiny

​There is much to absorb today and in the coming weeks from the Gerry Adams libel victory in Dublin yesterday.

​Mr Adams has won €100,000 in damages from an Irish jury which found that he was defamed in a BBC broadcast in which an anonymous contributor alleged he sanctioned the 2006 murder of Denis Donaldson.

It is one of the most momentous legal verdicts in the 104-year history of either the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland, even though it happened in only one of those jurisdictions. We are not commenting on that specific 2006 killing when we say that the pain this judgement will have caused to victims of an IRA that Mr Adams has supported since the 1960s is huge, given the former Sinn Fein president’s political and cultural influence, which stretches across the Atlantic. Like other observers said yesterday, we think today of the many victims of republican and loyalist terror.

We think specifically of the IRA victims for two reasons. First because Mr Adams was a leader of the republican movement that offered the IRA crucial moral support during the long, bleak years of the Troubles.

Second because there has been a failure back in the UK to get justice for that largest number of victims. Republican terrorists murdered 2,100 of the 3,500 Troubles dead, most of those republican killings by the IRA. Yet with tens of millions being spent annually examining claims against the security forces, there is minimal scrutiny of the IRA, despite the odd case now being announced by the emerging new legacy body.

Questions need to be answered from members of the ex Tory government, from this Labour one, from the wider criminal justice system and indeed the BBC itself as to how there has been such poor scrutiny. Keir Starmer needs to explain why he has not barred Mr Adams from taking a claim over his past internment.