After years on the run, Adams tended to deliberately make his movements difficult to predict. But his trial was a major news story, and it was widely known that he would be at court in the centre of Belfast that day. He had grown so fearful about his own safety that he had applied for a licence to carry a firearm for self-defence. But the request had been rejected, to nobody’s surprise, by the RUC. Adams had taken to predicting his own death, saying, ‘I think there is a 90 per cent chance I may be assassinated.’
