A further 187 “comfort letters” to those “On the Run” were issued between 2000 and 2014 (the latter was pressed on Tony Blair by Bertie Ahern in December 1999).

Among his various roles for the IRA and Sinn Féin, Donaldson worked abroad forging relations with international militant groups including Palestinian factions and the Lebanese Hezbollah. At the time Donaldson was in the Middle East he was already working as a British spy. The regulations required that Northern Ireland secretary be involved personally in making any such decision.

Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s miracle journey 

hours ago News Minister announces €1m funding pot for LGBTI+ organisations in rural communities in Ireland

As this legal regime has developed, a British serviceman is now 54 times more likely to be prosecuted for alleged Northern Ireland Troubles era crimes than a terrorist. Rightly, the Government has sought to remedy this asymmetry - acting upon its broad manifesto pledge in 2019 to protect veterans who are subject to vexatious claims from the burgeoning “lawfare” industry. He loses his West Belfast seat to the moderate nationalist party the SDLP as talks are about to start between him and John Hume, its leader. 1994 The clear favourite to succeed Adams is the Dublin TD and Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald.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”. Alex Attwood, SDLP candidate for Belfast West and former Stormont minister, said the tweet demonstrated a “staggering deficiency in judgment” by the Sinn Féin president. Adams is imprisoned several times and starts to write under the nom de guerre of Brownie for the republican newspaper An Phoblacht, mapping out a political strategy beyond the IRA’s armed campaign. 1981 As transformational journeys go, this one, it might be said, takes the biscuit. Gerry Adams, the former president of Sinn Féin and a veteran Irish republican, has revealed he is writing a cookery book.

He will not want or allow any successor to ever cast doubt on the validity of that IRA campaign. He will want them to state that this campaign was as legitimate as the rebels of 1916.” The former Sinn Fein leader confirmed it will be called The Negotiators Cookbook and will be filled with “some of the best-kept secrets of the Irish peace process”.Indeed, the peace process itself is based upon an inherent injustice for victims of terrorism – of bringing terrorists into Government. The biggest terrorists of the Troubles, such as the late Martin McGuinness, gave up “armed struggle” in exchange for becoming “Co-Premier” of Northern Ireland. It is obvious that there remain some within the US administration who seek to treat Sinn Féin differently.” 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. The former West Belfast MP also praised Jeremy Corbyn and said he hoped the Labour leader would become the next British prime minister.