FORMER SINN FÉIN president Gerry Adams will appear in a UK court in 2026 in a civil case brought by IRA bomb victims, England’s High Court ruled today.

The case will go before a civil court between February and June 2026 and Adams will contest the charges, it was confirmed at a case management hearing at London’s Royal Courts of Justice.

“Finally after five decades, for the first time Adams will appear in person in an English Court to be cross-examined by the victims of his alleged leadership of the IRA’s terror campaign,” said Matt Jury, a member of the law firm representing the victims.

The case claims that Adams “oversaw the indiscriminate bombing of civilians” during the Troubles.

Adams has always denied being involved in the IRA. He has never been found guilty of IRA membership, or membership of a terrorist organisation. 

In 2019, Adams told the Ballymurphy Inquest that he “was not a member of the IRA”. He said that when internment began in August 1971, he was a Sinn Féin activist but did not have direct knowledge of the Provisional IRA’s actions. 

The three claimants in the case are John Clark, a victim of the 1973 Old Bailey bombing, Jonathan Ganesh, a victim of the 1996 London Docklands bombing and Barry Laycock, a victim of the 1996 Arndale shopping centre bombing in Manchester.

They are suing Adams for nominal damages of £1 in a case that is expected to last seven days.

The IRA’s “mainland campaign” of bombing, which ran from the early 1970s until the 1990s, claimed more than 100 lives and injured thousands.

It targeted military targets and high-profile locations such as the Houses of Parliament, 10 Downing Street, Oxford Street, Harrod’s, Hyde Park and Regent’s Park.