US appeal court to rule on IRA interview tapes disclosure:
Decision expected on whether confidential testimonies of former paramilitaries can be handed over to police in Northern Ireland
A US appeal court is due to rule on whether confidential interviews with ex-IRA and loyalist activists can be handed over to the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
The row over the Boston College tapes – containing testimony of former paramilitaries – raises fundamental issues about the protection of sources by journalists and historians, and the right of the state to seize such material.
The tapes contain interviews by former IRA and loyalist activists who gave the interviews to the Belfast Project on the condition that what they said about their role in the Troubles would become public only after their deaths.
Former IRA prisoner-turned-writer Anthony McIntyre and the award-winning journalist Ed Moloney have argued that handing over the tapes could put lives at risk.
The PSNI are seeking the transcripts of an interview given by former IRA member Dolours Price to McIntyre and Boston College.
She later gave an interview to a newspaper journalist in which she admitted she had taken part in the Belfast Project.
The PSNI wants to review her material as it has reopened the inquiry into the Jean McConville murder – one of the most controversial of the Troubles in which a mother of seven children was kidnapped, shot dead and buried in secret on the order of the Belfast IRA who believed she was an informer, a claim her family has always disputed.
In one Boston tape released after he died, the former Belfast IRA commander Brendan Hughes alleges that the Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, gave the order that the woman be "disappeared" after she was shot. Adams has always denied any involvement.
Initial court decisions in the US accepted the PSNI's interest as legitimate, and the tapes of the Price interview and seven others deemed pertinent to an investigation into the disappeared are now in the hands of the US federal court.
Boston College also appealed against the decision to hand over the tapes, but separately.
The college said it has no grounds to protect the anonymity of Price, given that she in effect "outed" herself in a newspaper interview.
However, in June the college will try to stop the handover of seven other IRA interviews, querying their value to any investigation.
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Decision expected on whether confidential testimonies of former paramilitaries can be handed over to police in Northern Ireland
A US appeal court is due to rule on whether confidential interviews with ex-IRA and loyalist activists can be handed over to the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
The row over the Boston College tapes – containing testimony of former paramilitaries – raises fundamental issues about the protection of sources by journalists and historians, and the right of the state to seize such material.
The tapes contain interviews by former IRA and loyalist activists who gave the interviews to the Belfast Project on the condition that what they said about their role in the Troubles would become public only after their deaths.
Former IRA prisoner-turned-writer Anthony McIntyre and the award-winning journalist Ed Moloney have argued that handing over the tapes could put lives at risk.
The PSNI are seeking the transcripts of an interview given by former IRA member Dolours Price to McIntyre and Boston College.
She later gave an interview to a newspaper journalist in which she admitted she had taken part in the Belfast Project.
The PSNI wants to review her material as it has reopened the inquiry into the Jean McConville murder – one of the most controversial of the Troubles in which a mother of seven children was kidnapped, shot dead and buried in secret on the order of the Belfast IRA who believed she was an informer, a claim her family has always disputed.
In one Boston tape released after he died, the former Belfast IRA commander Brendan Hughes alleges that the Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, gave the order that the woman be "disappeared" after she was shot. Adams has always denied any involvement.
Initial court decisions in the US accepted the PSNI's interest as legitimate, and the tapes of the Price interview and seven others deemed pertinent to an investigation into the disappeared are now in the hands of the US federal court.
Boston College also appealed against the decision to hand over the tapes, but separately.
The college said it has no grounds to protect the anonymity of Price, given that she in effect "outed" herself in a newspaper interview.
However, in June the college will try to stop the handover of seven other IRA interviews, querying their value to any investigation.
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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