Jane Donaldson, daughter of the murdered British agent Denis Donaldson, was prevented from giving evidence during Gerry Adams’s defamation legal action against the BBC.
Without the jury present, Ms Donaldson told Mr Justice Alexander Owens her family has an “open mind” regarding who is responsible for her father’s killing but does not believe the Real IRA’s claim to it.
The Real IRA claimed responsibility for Mr Donaldson’s murder three years after his killing.
On Friday, a jury found the BBC defamed Mr Adams by publishing a claim in 2016 that the former Sinn Féin leader gave the go-ahead for the Provisional IRA to kill Mr Donaldson in Glenties, Co Donegal, in 2006. The jury awarded Mr Adams €100,000 in damages.
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Paul Gallagher SC, the BBC’s barrister, sought to have Ms Donaldson admitted as a witness during the trial. He contended that Adams’s legal side made a “big play” about the Donaldson family’s view about who is responsible for the murder.
Mr Gallagher submitted they should be entitled to counter the evidence of Ciaran Shiels, a solicitor who previously represented the Donaldson family, on this issue.
Earlier in the trial, Mr Shiels told the jury Mr Donaldson’s family did not accept or believe Mr Adams had anything to do with his murder.
Mr Adams’s lawyers objected to Ms Donaldson being admitted as a witness.
Mr Justice Owens did not admit Ms Donaldson’s evidence, as he held that it was not relevant to the questions to be decided by the jury. The judge noted she could not recall discussing the allegation about Mr Adams with Mr Shiels.
The BBC was also prevented from calling as witnesses historian Professor Eunan O’Halpin and campaigner Austin Stack, whose father Brian – a prison officer at Portlaoise Prison – was killed by the Provisional IRA in 1984.
Led through her evidence by Mr Gallagher in the absence of the jury, Ms Donaldson referred to a recent statement she issued to a newspaper, stating: “My family has made it publicly known that we never accepted the bogus claim of responsibility [for Mr Donaldson’s killing], which lacks all credibility, by a single Real IRA source in 2009.”
Asked by Mr Gallagher what her family’s position is on who was responsible for the murder, Ms Donaldson said: “Our position is that we have an open mind. We don’t know who killed my father.”
Asked by the judge about the Real IRA’s claim, Ms Donaldson said that at the time, the family “felt it didn’t make sense”.
She said details in their account “didn’t correlate” with sensitive and confidential information they had gathered from the Garda.
Ms Donaldson said she couldn’t recall having a conversation with Mr Shiels about the allegation made against Mr Adams.
She added that the family’s view on who was responsible for the murder has “evolved and changed over time”.
“I think we still had an open mind on it and we were reluctant to give a view on the matter [at the time of the broadcast],” she said.
Ms Donaldson said Mr Shiels was never a spokesperson for the family, but did at times deal with the media on their behalf. Mr Shiels previously represented the family at inquest hearings.
She said she had had no contact with Mr Shiels since 2019, and her family, as of earlier this year, no longer retained Madden and Finucane – Mr Shiels’s firm – as their solicitors.
Cross-examined by Tom Hogan SC, for Mr Adams, Ms Donaldson said her family was “not in support” of either party involved in the defamation action.
She said she was unaware of a meeting in April 2016 between Mr Shiels and journalist Jennifer O’Leary to discuss the Spotlight programme.
Ms Donaldson accepted she was aware and told of a subsequent meeting in May to discuss the programme, attended by Mr Shiels, Ms O’Leary and Ms Donaldson’s husband, Ciarán Kearney.
In his evidence, Mr Adams said Declan Kearney, Ms Donaldson’s brother-in-law, investigated Mr Donaldson when allegations first emerged that he was an informant.
She accepted that following that meeting, Mr Shiels engaged in correspondence with the Spotlight team on behalf of the family.
She also accepted Mr Shiels spoke for the family – “as our solicitor” – in comments he made to the media directly after the broadcast of the Spotlight programme.
Ms Donaldson told the judge that their family’s focus was on pursuing the truth about the murder.
She said that for 19 years, her family had been seeking information on who exposed Mr Donaldson as a British spy, and who conspired to murder him.
She said it was a matter of public record that the identity of the British agent known as Stakeknife – the Belfast man and IRA member Freddie Scappaticci – was protected. Her father, however, was “thrown to the wolves”, she said.
In a statement issued after the trial, Ms Donaldson said her family’s tragedy was “trivialised” by Mr Adams, who “prioritised his own financial and reputational interests over any regard for traumatising my family”.
“No one spoke for my family in court,” she said. “We supported neither side in this case.”
She called for a public inquiry, with a cross-Border dimension, into her father’s death.
