FORMER Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams won his libel suit against the BBC today over a claim he authorised the killing of an informant.

A jury at the High Court in Dublin ruled in Mr Adams’s favour and he was awarded €100,000 (around £85,000) in damages.

Mr Adams sued Britain’s public broadcaster over a claim in a documentary and online article that he sanctioned the killing of Denis Donaldson, a long-serving Sinn Fein official who acknowledged in 2005 that he had worked for British intelligence. 

He was shot dead at his cottage in rural Ireland four months later.

In the BBC programme broadcast in September 2016, an anonymous source claimed the shooting was sanctioned by the political and military leadership of the Irish Republican Army and that Mr Adams gave “the final say.”

Mr Adams denies involvement and called the allegation a “grievous smear.”

Mr Adams is one of the most influential figures of Northern Ireland’s decades of conflict, and its peace process. 

He led the IRA-linked party Sinn Fein between 1983 and 2018. He has always denied being an IRA member.

Mr Adams thanked the jury and said: “There’s an onus on both governments and everyone else — and I include myself in this — to try to deal with these legacy issues as best that we can.”