A Belfast court has thrown out a libel case brought by a leading member of Sinn Féin who was accused of shooting a prison guard, dealing a fresh blow to the party’s multiple lawsuits against the media.
Master Evan Bell of the high court on Monday struck out the action by Gerry Kelly, who took a case against the journalist and commentator Malachi O’Doherty, calling it “scandalous, frivolous and vexatious”.
In a 55-page ruling the judge said the attempt to personally sue O’Doherty was “completely untenable” and an effort to abuse the law to intimidate and silence a critic. “It would be utterly unjust if the court were to allow the proceedings to continue.”
The ruling followed two other recent failed attempts by Sinn Féin members to sue a politician in Northern Ireland and a newspaper in Ireland.
Press freedom groups have accused the party of using strategic lawsuits against public participation (Slapps), a form of legal harassment intended to muzzle critics. Sinn Féin has denied the accusation.
Kelly, 70, is a Stormont assembly member who was convicted of planting IRA car bombs in London in 1973. In 1983 he was one of 38 IRA prisoners who escaped from the Maze prison, during which a guard, John Adams, was shot in the head.
Adams, who survived, identified Kelly as the gunman. Kelly has never admitted it and was found not guilty in a 1987 trial. He has written books about the breakout that cloak the gunman’s identity.
In two radio interviews in 2019, O’Doherty, an author and Belfast Telegraph commentator, said Kelly was the gunman. Kelly issued a writ for defamation a year later.
The judge said a right-thinking person would take the view that a man who bombed central London had “lost his moral compass” and placed little value on human life.
In relation to the 1987 acquittal, he said criminal proceedings had a higher standard of proof than civil proceedings.
“What Mr Kelly has written in his books, in my view, makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for him to rebut the argument that he was not a joint tort-feasor in respect of the battery.”
Bell said politicians had a right to their good name but in the interest of political speech and democracy should show restraint in suing journalists, and that Kelly’s case amounted to a Slapp. “I therefore award Dr O’Doherty both the costs of this application and the costs of the action on an indemnity basis.”
The Irish government and press freedom groups have repeatedly accused Sinn Féin of trying to stifle legitimate scrutiny, a claim it rejects. Its members are believed to have at least eight active cases against media outlets, with additional cases against political opponents.
Michelle O’Neill, the party’s deputy leader, won a libel action against a Democratic Unionist party councillor, John Carson, who posted that she would be “put back in her kennel”, but received no payout because the Belfast court said the remark, though offensive and misogynistic, had had no adverse impact on her reputation.
In December a Dublin high court dismissed a defamation action against the Sunday Life, the sister paper of the Belfast Telegraph. The action was taken by a constituency organiser, Liam Lappin, who said he had been defamed in its description of a photograph of him and 13 others at a Sinn Féin Christmas party.
