DUBLIN (Reuters) -Former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said he intended to take legal action against the British government for seeking to prohibit the payment of compensation to those imprisoned without trial during decades of conflict in Northern Ireland.
Adams, who led the Irish nationalist party during much of the conflict, was among hundreds of people held by Britain without trial in the early 1970s under a policy meant to break the Irish Republican Army. He has always denied membership of the militant group.
London published proposed legislation on Tuesday to enact a new framework to address the legacy of decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. Part of the bill seeks to prevent those detained without trial from receiving compensation.
“Yesterday the British government produced legislation which upholds the quashing of the convictions but denies compensation. This is clearly discriminatory,” Adams said in a statement on Wednesday.
“I have instructed my legal team that it is my intention to pursue legal action.”
The UK Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that Adams was not lawfully detained as his internment was not approved by a British cabinet minister.
A spokesperson for the British government said it believed the Supreme Court’s ruling was an incorrect interpretation of parliament’s intention.
“This week, we have introduced legislation to clearly reaffirm that principle for these cases, making it clear in the law that detentions were legitimate and lawful,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Adams stood down as leader of Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the IRA, in 2018.
The internment of suspected militants was one of the most controversial elements of the British counterinsurgency campaign.
A 1998 peace deal largely ended the three decades of violence involving mainly Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland, largely Protestant pro-British unionists wanting to remain part of the United Kingdom and British forces.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin, additional reporting by Amanda Ferguson in Belfast and Sam Tabahriti in London; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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