John Gregg (UDA) - Assassination Attempt On Gerry Adams

Assassination Attempt On Gerry Adams

On 14 March 1984, he severely wounded Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams in an attack supposedly ordered as a response to the earlier killings of Ulster Unionist Party politicians Robert Bradford and Edgar Graham. Gregg, at the time the head of the UDA commando in Rathcoole, was in charge of a three man hit team that pulled up alongside Adams' car near Belfast City Hall and opened fire injuring Adams and his three fellow passengers, who nonetheless escaped to seek treatment at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast.

Gregg and his team were apprehended almost immediately by a British Army patrol that opened fire on them before ramming their car. The attack had been known in advance by security forces due to a tip-off from informants within Rathcoole; Adams and his co-passengers had survived in part because Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers, acting on the informants' information, had replaced much of the ammunition in the UDA's Rathcoole weapons dump with low-velocity bullets.

Gregg was jailed for 18 years; however, he only served half his sentence and was released in 1993. When asked by the BBC in prison if he regretted anything about the shooting, his reply was, "Only that I didn't succeed."