Sinn Féin is to mount a legal challenge against the British government's decision to sanction the party following the Independent Monitoring Commission's (IMC) recent adjudication that the IRA is still engaged in paramilitary violence.
The IMC also found that Sinn Féin and the IRA were linked and that some senior members of Sinn Féin, whom it did not name, were senior members of the IRA army council. Based on these findings, the Northern Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, fined Sinn Féin's Assembly grouping £120,000.
The Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, said the sanctions against the party were undemocratic and a breach of the European Convention of Human Rights. He said the IMC report was "flawed" and that the body itself lacked independence.
"The IMC is clearly in contravention of the Good Friday agreement. The role of the IMC was to facilitate the exclusion of Sinn Féin, to soft-pedal on unionist violence and to ignore totally the behaviour of the British government, the party most in breach of the agreement," said Mr Adams.
"The recent report from the IMC, which the British government is using as the basis to discriminate against Sinn Féin, is a proxy report by the securocrats, PSNI and British army. The recommendations are clearly discriminatory and subvert the democratic and electoral rights and mandate of Sinn Féin and our electorate," he added.
Notwithstanding the challenge to the IMC adjudication, Mr Adams said that Sinn Féin was determined to achieve a political resolution. He said that even during the current European Parliament election campaign Sinn Féin was continuing to hold meetings with the British and Irish governments in an effort to end the political deadlock.
He rejected suggestions that Sinn Féin wanted to defer striking a new agreement until after the next British general election when Sinn Féin hopes it will take all or a number of the SLDP's three Westminster seats.
"There is no notion within Sinn Féin that this should be put off until after elections, either these elections or Westminster elections. The process is too fraught, too difficult, too fragile and too important to be subjected to the whims of election fever."
