Decision not to prosecute Adams to be reviewed

The decision not to prosecute Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams over allegations he covered up for his sex abuser brother is to be reviewed.

Northern Ireland’s attorney general John Larkin has been asked to examine what the republican leader told police about Liam Adams and when.

The paedophile will be sentenced on Nov 5 in Belfast for six years of rape attacks on his daughter, Aine, in the 1970s.

While he admitted he could have acted differently with the benefit of hindsight, Gerry Adams insists he co-operated fully with the PSNI and prosecutors.

Mr Adams first heard in 1987 that his brother had abused his niece. He told Liam Adams’ first trial which collapsed earlier this year that he had confessed in 2000 but he did not pass that information to the police for another nine years.

The North’s DPP, Barra McGrory, said there had been considerable public interest in the case and asked the attorney general to launch the independent review of evidence.

Mr Adams has insisted that the police were aware of the allegations against his brother as far back as 1987 but he is facing deepening criticism over his failure to make a more frank statement in the nine years after his brother came clean.

He also claimed an agenda at play amid the controversy surrounding the case.

He also claimed that before he gave a full and frank statement to the police in 2009, Aine told him she wanted her father to acknowledge he abused her.

During the Liam Adams’ trial Aine Adams gave graphic details of the abuse she suffered from four years of age. The first rape she remembers took place while her mother was in hospital giving birth to her younger brother, Conor, in 1977.

The allegations about Liam Adams were first made public when his daughter took part in a television documentary in 2009.

A short time later, Gerry Adams revealed his father, Gerry Sr, a veteran IRA man, had physically and sexually abused members of his family.

It was around the time the documentary was being made that Mr Adams gave a statement to police with information on what he knew about the abuse.

Mr Larkin is expected to have the evidence reviewed in two weeks.