Donaldson family renew call for Inquiry into his death
John Breslin, Irish News, May 31st, 2025
A PUBLIC inquiry must be held into the circumstances surrounding the murder of Denis Donaldson, his daughter said following the verdict [in the successful legal action taken by former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams against the BBC].
Jane Donaldson, in a statement on behalf of her family, said they are still “no closer to the truth” in relation to the April 2006 killing.
She said that no-one “spoke for my family in court” and that they supported “neither side in this case”.
In the absence of the jurors, Mr Justice Alexander Owens heard arguments over whether Ms Donaldson would be allowed to deliver testimony as part of the BBC’s defence. He ruled that what she intended to say was irrelevant in relation to what the jury was being asked to consider.
“The jury heard sensitive, privileged family information tossed around without our consent, but did not hear my testimony,” Ms Donaldson said.
She added that “we have proven that there was a ‘corporate failure’ by state agencies to protect my daddy’s life”.
“It is already in the public domain that some republicans and state agencies were connected by common purpose in protecting Agent Stakeknife,” she added.
“We need to know if the same actors shared an agenda of common purpose in exposing and murdering my daddy.
“Importantly, the judge told the court that the conspiracy to expose and murder my daddy is a matter of the most serious and highest public interest.
“The public interest can only now be fully served by some form of public inquiry, with a cross-border dimension.”
Ms Donaldson added: “Limitless legal resources and vast expense were invested in this case while there is supposedly a live Garda investigation into my daddy’s murder.
“My daddy’s inquest has been postponed 27 times.”
‘Critical investigative flaw’
She said: “My family is being stonewalled while this libel case carried on. Evidence was given that the Garda murder investigation is about who pulled the trigger, not who pulled the strings.
“That is a critical investigative flaw. My family believe the opportunistic claim of responsibility by the Real IRA is entirely bogus.
Denis Donaldson, the former Sinn Féin official (inset), was murdered in Co Donegal in 2006
“We don’t know who was involved but we do need answers.”
SDLP MLA Matthew O’Toole said: “Gerry Adams is entitled to petition a court and a jury has given its verdict.
“The BBC will have questions to consider. But today I’m thinking of the thousands of victims of the IRA, loyalists and the state who will never get a single day in court, let alone justice.”
DUP leader Gavin Robinson said the jury decision “relates to a specific allegation broadcast and published online by the BBC about Gerry Adams”.
“Our thoughts today are with the innocent victims who suffered at the hands of the IRA – ruthless terrorists who were victim-makers for many years,” Mr Robinson said.
“While journalists must always be able to scrutinise and investigate in the public interest, the BBC have significant questions to answer,” he added.
What did Denis Donaldson’s daughter want to tell the Court?
Sam McBride, Belfast Telegraph, May 31st, 2025
DENIS DONALDSON'S FAMILY ONCE BACKED GERRY ADAMS. NO MORE. THERE HAS BEEN A BREAKDOWN BETWEEN ADAMS AND A FAMILY STEEPED IN REPUBLICANISM, WITH LINKS TO THE TOP OF SINN FEIN TODAY
On the morning that Gerry Adams' historically significant libel trial began, I received an unexpected email from Denis Donaldson's daughter — which for legal reasons we can only now report.
That email — along with a second statement which also can only now be fully reported — speaks to the burning mystery at the heart of this case, which the libel trial hasn't resolved: Who really killed this key republican 19 years ago?
Hours after Donaldson's murder, the Provisional IRA issued a statement denying involvement. At the time, the Donaldson family endorsed that, saying they “believed the IRA”.
When in 2016 BBC Spotlight broadcast the allegation of a former British spy within the Provisional IRA that it had been responsible for the murder, the family's solicitor said that was “absolute nonsense”.
Based on that, Gerry Adams might have expected Donaldson's family to testify for his side in the defamation case against the BBC.
Jane Donaldson's email on 29 April made clear that wouldn't be happening.
Judge upheld objections by lawyers for Adams
It can now be revealed that Adams' lawyers objected to Jane Donaldson addressing the jury and the judge agreed to their objections.
The email was prompted by a comment from my colleague Allison Morris, who in a radio interview that morning had referred to the family having dismissed the allegation within the Spotlight programme.
Jane Donaldson said: “On behalf of my family, I wish to make clear that we do not and never have believed the claim of responsibility purported to be on behalf of the RIRA in relation to my father's murder.”
She added that her family “does not support the plaintiffs of any civil litigation relating to my father's murder, other than on behalf of my family”.
Jane Donaldson's husband, Ciarán Kearney, formerly worked for Sinn Fein; his brother Declan remains Sinn Fein's chairman, and a third brother Jarlath is a former Sinn Fein special adviser at Stormont. This is a family steeped in republicanism.
The family had previously been represented by Madden & Finucane, but the statement referred to a new team of solicitors at PA Duffy.
A few hours later, the statement was issued by a PR company; among those it sent the statement to were two senior BBC Northern Ireland journalists.
On the first day of a massive trial, this meant that the BBC had in its possession a statement from the family of the man whose death was at the heart of the case saying that they didn't believe the prevailing narrative that the Real IRA murdered Donaldson.
The family did not say they believed the Provisional IRA was responsible, let alone suggesting Adams was involved. Nevertheless, the statement clearly wasn't helpful to the former Sinn Fein president.
Due to the case being heard by a jury, we did not report the statement to avoid prejudicing the trial.
Second statement
Last week, the family issued a second, even more pointed statement.
Ciaran Shiels of Madden & Finucane had given evidence in support of Adams. Shiels was the family's solicitor at the time of the Spotlight programme.
He said that if the BBC reporter had put the claim to him, “I would've said to her not only was she barking up the wrong tree, she wasn't even in the right orchard.”
In response, Jane Donaldson said: “I wish to make it clear that Mr Ciaran Shiels is not a legal representative or spokesman for my family.”
She said Shiels hadn't had direct contact with her immediate family for several years, his firm no longer represents them, and that no one from the firm consulted them about giving evidence in support of Adams' case.
Shiels last night told the Belfast Telegraph he had represented the family for many years, on a pro bono basis, without payment. He said repeated praise of Adams in family statements had been drafted by Ciaran Kearney who at the time was employed by Sinn Fein.
He said that both Kearney and Jane Donaldson had thanked him after he publicly rubbished the Spotlight programme which had “upset” them and that as recently as March, Jane Donaldson wrote to express “my family's deep gratitude” to the firm for its work.
Shiels stressed that he made clear to the court he was no longer acting for the family and that he “did not relish or volunteer” giving evidence but was called to do so as an officer of the court.
Referring more broadly to the circumstances of her father's murder, Jane Donaldson said it had been “speculated that some republicans and some in state agencies shared a common contempt for the fate of my father” and her family “never accepted the bogus claim of responsibility, which lacks all credibility, by a single Real IRA source in 2009”.
Stakeknife
She contrasted her father's situation with that of Stakeknife, the British agent at the top of the IRA “protected by a number of common interests”. Where her father was “thrown to the wolves”, Stakeknife was “carefully sheltered in west Belfast by British security agencies and by republicans, before being publicly defended and then quietly shepherded away to safety in England. None of those involved have accounted for that”.
A republican family's anger at state security agencies over the murder of a loved one who became an informer is unsurprising.
However, what is obvious is that the Donaldson family's anger now extends to unnamed republican figures who they believe could have done more to protect the man blasted to death in remote Donegal.
There will be those — both republican and unionist, for different reasons — who have no sympathy for Denis Donaldson. Most republicans view him purely as an informer, and to them that represents the lowest of the low. Many unionists view him as a terrorist and that trumps whatever information he gave to the state.
In the middle of these two positions, his family — who weren't responsible for his actions — are now caught.
There's little sense that solving this crime is now a political or a policing priority.
Speaking outside the court yesterday, Adams said he was “very mindful of the Donaldson family in the course of this long trial” and urged the Irish Justice Minister to meet the family.
‘Trivialising our family tragedy’
But the family then issued a third statement yesterday afternoon, saying that “by reducing events which damaged our lives to a debate about damage to his reputation”, the trial had “trivialised our family tragedy”.
Jane Donaldson went on: “We supported neither side in this case. Although the plaintiff claimed sympathy for my family, his legal team objected to me giving evidence to challenge the account of his witnesses. The jury heard sensitive, privileged family information tossed around without our consent, but did not hear my testimony.” Having joined the IRA in the 1960s and spent time in jail with Bobby Sands, her father was a big beast of the republican movement. After jail, he represented it abroad at key moments.
But during the trial, Adams played down his closeness to Donaldson, saying: “I liked the guy and I knew him and I knew his wife and his daughter, Jane, but I didn't really have many dealings with him. I would have been working at another level within the party.”
A senior unionist figure involved in the post-1998 era told me this week he was surprised to hear that because he always understood there to be four key republican figures they dealt with — Adams, Martin McGuinness, Richard McAuley and Donaldson.
A senior Sinn Fein figure likewise told me that Donaldson had been a key “fixer” who set up the party's structures when it entered Stormont and liaised well with the civil service at a point when the party was new to government.
Several years ago, a dissident republican in a Scottish prison was secretly recorded claiming to have murdered Donaldson. He has never been charged and a senior security source recently described him to the Belfast Telegraph as “a Walter Mitty”.
The most intriguing piece of evidence is a journal which Donaldson had been writing when he was killed.
In February, Jane Donaldson made a 24-page submission to Westminster's Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.
In the document, which it published online but wasn't picked up by the media, she said that after her father's murder her family were given “an inventory of items recovered by gardai which would be returned to my family after forensic inquiries had been completed”.
That document made no mention of the journal. Three months later, a senior Garda officer told the family this was an error. “He advised that the journal was in the office desk of the local Garda Chief Inspector in Glenties and that arrangements would be made to return it to my family at the earliest opportunity,” she said.
Gardai refusing to give family dead man’s personal journal for ‘security reasons’
“Since that time, my family have repeatedly restated our legitimate expectation that the promise given to return my father's journal would be honoured by An Garda Siochana. This journal constitutes part of my father's personal estate and is of sentimental value given that it contains his final words. It is also an item which my family contends may hold clues about the circumstances surrounding the criminal conspiracy which lead to the exposure and murder of my father. For 19 years, my family's requests for access to, a copy of, or the final return of my father's journal have been stonewalled by gardai.”
She said that in 2008, Garda Assistant Commissioner Derek Byrne told the family he was retaining the journal for “security reasons”. Four years later, she said he told them the journal had “absolutely not” generated any investigative leads.
She said he told them: “If I was to try investigating some of the stuff in there, I'd have to go interviewing a lot of people. I haven't done that. I've kept it”.
In 2019, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris told the Oireachtas that the journal was “of evidential value in an ongoing and legitimate enquiry” and then added: “The journal contains information that we do not think should be in the public domain” and “contains information of a personal nature, not just related to Mr Donaldson and his family”.
This is an exceptionally strange reason for the state seizing and refusing to release a personal journal. Anyone who keeps a diary is likely to record information which is personal, sensitive and involves other people.
When they die, the state doesn't tend to swoop in and seize the diary because it “contains information of a personal nature”.
What has happened here points to the journal being of acute sensitivity.
The fact that the Irish security authorities are withholding the journal does not in itself prove anything as to what it might contain.
The strategic view
Intelligence agencies tend to take a strategic view of what is in the long-term interests of the state. That includes protecting informers. But it can extend to surprising figures.
Sir John Stephens and Sir Desmond de Silva, who separately conducted extensive inquiries into collusion, each found that the security services had acted on information from informers to save Gerry Adams' life on more than one occasion.
Sir Desmond said that in May 1987, the UDA planned to murder Adams by attaching a limpet mine to his car.
Brian Nelson, an Army informer within the UDA, was to be in the hit team. The Army and RUC Special Branch flooded the area with security forces, and the attack was called off.
Nelson recorded in his journal that the FRU — the highly secretive Army unit handling sensitive Army operations in Northern Ireland — told him that “the assassination of Adams, had it gone ahead, would have been totally counterproductive particularly considering the delicate balance of power within Sinn Fein”.
As a result of MI5's intervention, MI5 documents showed the Army's Assistant Chief of Staff “has given a specific instruction that the attempt on Adams must not succeed”.
De Silva noted that part of the military might have been encouraging Nelson to help kill Adams — but more powerful parts of the British state intervened.
Inquest adjourned 27 times
None of this means Adams was an informer. There's never been any credible evidence in that direction. But it shows that intelligence agencies — even when in the midst of a bloody conflict — can see the value in protecting someone on the other side of the conflict if that person is, even in relative terms, more moderate than others.
In the absence of seeing the journal — in even a redacted form if that was necessary — there can only be supposition as to what within it is so highly sensitive that it can't even be given to Donaldson's family.
Jane Donaldson said the inquest into her father's murder had been adjourned at least 27 times in the Republic, a process she said involved repeated “re-traumatisation”.
She and her family are “entirely independent of any victims group or political party” and said that she'd spoken with no one beyond her family in relation to her submission.
There is now an obvious rift between Adams and the Donaldson family. What has caused it remains for now unknown.
For Adams, this is the end of a long legal slog against the BBC. The Donaldson family have been on a much longer road, with many miles yet to travel.
