Former Sinn F\u00e9in leader Gerry Adams was the leader of the IRA until \u201cthe mid-2000s, and it was only then that he took a backwards step\u201d, a senior former Police Service of Northern Ireland officer has told the High Court in London.<\/p>\n
Former detective superintendent Timothy Hanley, who headed the PSNI\u2019s serious crime squad until his retirement in 2016, was the officer who arrested Adams in 2014 in connection with the kidnapping and killing of Jean McConville in the 1970s.<\/p>\n
He said he had been \u201cintimately involved\u201d with intelligence linking Adams to the IRA since he joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1969, and from 2009 read \u201cintelligence reports that came from everywhere\u201d.<\/p>\n
Adams is facing a civil suit for \u00a31 in damages by three victims of IRA bombings in England, who argue that he was \u201cdirectly responsible\u201d for IRA bombs between 1973 and 1996.<\/p>\n
Edward Craven, Adams\u2019 barrister, was sharply criticised by Judge Jonathan Swift for questioning Hanley about a prosecution he faced in 1991 for shooting a Catholic youth he believed to have been armed.<\/p>\n
Hanley had then made \u201ca very significant error and had jumped to the wrong conclusion\u201d, said Craven, who asked the former officer if he was now making the same mistake again in his allegations against Adams.<\/p>\n
Interrupting, the judge halted the line of questioning, saying Craven had gone \u201cwide of the mark\u201d and was making \u201clight of a tragedy\u201d in the life of Hanley.<\/p>\n
Hanley, clearly upset by the issue being raised in the Royal Courts of Justice, was acquitted of the killing, where the court found he had wrongly, but honestly, believed the youth was armed.<\/p>\n
In his witness statement, Hanley said: \u201cThere is no question in my mind that Adams was the leader of the IRA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know Adams was the leader until the mid-2000s, and it was only then that he took a backwards step. The IRA is like the Mafia; you never really leave it. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe led the IRA throughout the whole of the Troubles from the early 1970s. I don\u2019t dismiss that Adams took the IRA towards a peaceful resolution, but he also directed IRA terrorism which resulted in the deaths of many people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Craven questioned the accuracy of intelligence documents, since some other papers claimed that Adams had been a member of the Army Council, but had left in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Thursday, the court heard senior Garda<\/a> intelligence officers repeatedly placed Adams<\/a> and Martin McGuinness at IRA<\/a> army council meetings that were always held in the Republic of Ireland.<\/p>\n Praising the quality of Garda intelligence, a former member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary\u2019s Special Branch \u2013 testifying behind a screen and identified in court only as Witness B \u2013 said the Garda had even better insight into the IRA in the 1970s and 1980s than the RUC.<\/p>\n Up to then, the RUC had believed that the seven-strong army council met on their own, but the Garda were able to tell them confidently that other senior figures in the organisation were able to attend.<\/p>\n The meeting were always held in the Republic because it was \u201ctoo dangerous\u201d for the IRA to hold such meetings in Northern Ireland, Witness B told Adams\u2019s lawyer James Robottom.<\/p>\n Rejecting questions over his memory, the 71-year-old former officer said he could not only remember what senior garda\u00ed had told him, but he could also remember where the meeting happened too.<\/p>\n Denying any personal enmity towards Adams, the retired officer said he had spent the majority of his police career stopping members of loyalist paramilitary organisations from \u201ckilling totally innocent Catholics\u201d, not pursuing the IRA.<\/p>\n However, he said it was \u201cunthinkable\u201d that bombs could have been set off outside of Northern Ireland, in England or elsewhere, without \u201cthe sanction, or explicit instructions\u201d of the IRA army council.<\/p>\n \u201cYou would not have had a situation where somebody would say, \u2018Wouldn\u2019t it be a good idea to bomb London?\u2019 They were a very disciplined organisation. There was a strategic element to them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He was questioned about a letter unearthed in last year\u2019s National Archives in Dublin from then Garda assistant commissioner Noel Conroy in May 1996 to the then secretary general of the Department of Justice, Tim Dalton.<\/p>\n