The Highest court in the UK has found that Gerry Adams was illegally imprisoned by the British government when he was interned without trial in the early 1970s and has quashed his two convictions for trying to escape from the Maze Prison.
In a judgment this morning, five judges of the Supreme Court has ruled that Mr Adam’s detention should have been personally authorised by the Secretary of State at the time, and because it hadn’t been, the order to detain him was invalid.They said his detention was unlawful and therefore his imprisonments for attempting to escape from prison in 1973 and 1974 were also unlawful.
