One of the researchers who interviewed ex-IRA members for a history project says he fears for his life after Boston College agreed to hand over what was supposed to be confidential testimony to the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Former IRA member and now writer Anthony McIntyre has written on his website of concerns for his own security after the college obeyed a legal order forcing them to give one of the interviews to the PSNI.
The controversial tape recording is from Dolours Price, a former IRA member, and is understood to relate to the abduction, murder and secret burial of mother of 10 Jean McConville in 1972. McConville became the first of the "Disappeared", victims of the IRA that the Provisionals murdered. In a previous posthumous tape recording, the ex-Belfast IRA commander Brendan Hughes told McIntyre and Boston College that Gerry Adams organised the covert unit responsible for McConville's death and disappearance – a claim that the Sinn Féin president has always denied.
A US court will rule later on Monday on a challenge by McIntyre and others involved in the "Belfast Project" who want to stop the federal authorities forcing Boston College to surrender the Price interview to the PSNI. Dolours Price was one of 26 former IRA members to give a series of interviews – between 2001 and 2006 – as part of the research study.
McIntyre, along with a loyalist researcher who interviewed members of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association, gave assurances to the interviewees that the material would be made public only once they were dead.
The director of the "Belfast Project", Ed Moloney, has warned that if the material is used to help the PSNI build a case relating to the McConville murder no one from a paramilitary background is ever likely to speak truthfully about their role in the Northern Ireland Troubles. Both Moloney and McIntyre feel Boston College has let them down. The college also has confidential material relating to the decommissioning of IRA weapons in its archives.
Unionists and some victims' organisations in Northern Ireland have argued that Boston College had a moral duty to hand over the tapes particularly in relation to the plight of the "Disappeared".
