For years now Sinn Féin have embarrassingly tried to portray Gerry Adams as some kind of international icon. It was only in March that Gerry Adams was comparing himself to Rosa Parks. If a similar remark had been made by any other political leader on this island, Sinn Féin would have unleashed an orchestrated wave of angry condemnation. They would not accept any talk of context or of irony. They should hold themselves to the same standard,” Attwood said. On the hustings McGuinness came face to face with IRA victims, including the son of an Irish soldier the Provisionals had murdered who said in front of the TV cameras that the Sinn Féin deputy leader was not fit to be president of the nation. He was elected in 1983 and was the longest-serving leader of any political party in the UK or Ireland. Along with the cessation of extradition requests, there has also been widespread use of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy in Northern Ireland – at least 418 royal pardons were issued between 1979 and 2002, many for terrorists.

There is an onus on the British government to identify and inform other internees whose internment may also have been unlawful.” Gerry Adams denies he was consulted on what he calls an alleged IRA army council decision or that he had any final say in the matter being sanctioned. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters He reportedly told an audience in Belfast: “The British never fed us. They never had any food. But as intrepid republicans and being blessed by one or two great cooks, these are the recipes that sustained the Irish negotiating team. One of our greatest achievements has been to build a peace process. I will not be standing for the Dáil; neither will Martin Ferris [a former IRA gunrunner and Sinn Féin TD]. This is also my last Ard Fheis,” said Adams. He said he would ask the party’s national executive to agree a date in 2018 to elect the next Sinn Féin president. One veteran of the IRA’s West Belfast Brigade who was once close to Adams and his family doubts that the former MP for the constituency and TD for Louth in the Irish Republic is about to relinquish his full control of the party.Sinn Fein had a virtual "diners' club" organised during Stormont's lengthy peace process talks, former president Gerry Adams said. The former West Belfast MP has been leader of Sinn Féin since 1983. He currently represents the Louth constituency in the Irish Republic and sits in the Dáil. Sinn Féin’s outgoing president, Gerry Adams, has labelled Brexit a “disaster” for the island of Ireland. Adams said the bombing would undermine his efforts to obtain a visa for fundraising in the US, which was one of many “tactical reasons” for not wanting further violence. The DoJ said in 2021 that Adams was ineligible for compensation for a miscarriage of justice because it was the analysis of a legal point that led to the guilty verdicts being overturned, rather than a new or newly discovered fact.

Speaking at a Peile an Phobail event in Belfast on Monday, Adams reportedly said: “The British never fed us. They never had any food. Of course internment … was never lawful. In fact it set aside the normal principles of law and was based on a blunt and brutal piece of coercive legislation. I have no regrets about my imprisonment, except for the time I was separated from my family. Adams, who was once one of the most feared figures in Anglo-Irish politics, has undergone something of a folksy makeover in the past five years, tweeting pictures of himself hillwalking and doing daily chores.Adams and other Sinn Féin representatives have to regularly go through additional searches and scrutiny when travelling to and from the US. Significantly, both the DUP and the UUP were minor players in these debates. Indeed, in the case of R v Adams the heavy lifting was done by distinguished lawyers and civil servants – and not by populists. In the heart of Westminster, there is still a deep-seated consciousness of the legitimacy of what the State was trying to do at the height of the Troubles. Gerry Adams was unlawfully denied compensation after his historical convictions for attempting to escape from prison were overturned, a high court judge has ruled.

It contains some of the best-kept secrets of the Irish peace process,” he added, disclosing that he was also writing a book of short stories. Adams is one of the co-architects alongside McGuinness of an IRA ceasefire, which within three years becomes a permanent cessation of violence. 1997 Meanwhile, a damning biography of Adams written by Malachi O’Doherty, a Belfast author and journalist, will be launched on Thursday at the Ulster Museum. At a two-day internal conference in the Irish Republic, Adams told party activists he wanted to implement a “planned process of generational change”.The British Government was reluctant to feed them during dialogue leading up to the Good Friday Agreement in 1997 and 1998, so the republican negotiators took matters into their own hands, he said.

Adams revealed he was writing The Negotiators Cookbook, promising recipes with "some of the best-kept secrets of the [1998] Irish peace process", while at west Belfast arts festival Féile an Phobail over the weekend.As a result, Mr Adams’ detention had not been lawfully authorised. His detention was therefore invalid, and it followed that he should not have been convicted of attempting to escape from lawful custody for the elementary but inevitable reason that the custody in which he had been detained was, in fact, not lawful. His appeal is therefore allowed, and his convictions are quashed.” Outside observers of the often closed world of Irish republicanism also agree that Adams’s history and character dictate he will still play a leading role behind the scenes. In a statement released through his solicitor on Tuesday night, Adams lawyer said his client “had no involvement and had no knowledge whatsoever in Denis Donaldson’s killing”. When he does finally go, the Sinn Féin politician most likely to take over from Adams will be the party’s deputy leader and Dublin TD, Mary Lou McDonald. With Michelle O’Neill the leader in Northern Ireland, the party once umbilically linked to the Provisional IRA and its armed campaign will not only be led by two women but also by a generation with no direct involvement in the Provisionals’ 30-year “war”. Documents released to the public records office under the 30-year rule revealed that the British prime minister at the time, Harold Wilson, knew there had been procedural irregularities in the detention of Adams and other republicans who tried to escape from the heavily guarded camp.