Former IRA man Anthony McIntyre loses legal battle over Boston College interviews

A former IRA man interviewed for an American university project has lost a legal battle to stop police accessing his confidential tapes.
Anthony McIntyre was one of the main researchers in the Boston College projectAnthony McIntyre was one of the main researchers in the Boston College project
Anthony McIntyre was one of the main researchers in the Boston College project

Lawyers for Anthony McIntyre claimed detectives should not be allowed to access the Boston College material due to errors in the International Letter of Request (ILOR) setting out alleged offences under investigation.

But High Court judges ruled that any flaws in the process were not due to bad faith on the part of the authorities.

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Dismissing the challenge, Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan has given McIntyre’s legal team two weeks to confirm intentions to appeal the verdict.

It means police are not yet be able to examine recordings which have already been transported from the United States to Belfast.

Sir Declan said: “We will direct that the material should be held in secure storage, under seal, at the Royal Courts of Justice.”

McIntyre was one of the main researchers in the Boston College project to compile an oral history of the conflict in Northern Ireland.

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Dozens of loyalists and republicans provided testimonies on the understanding their accounts would remain confidential while they are alive.

But those assurances were dealt a blow after police secured transcripts and tapes of interviews given by former IRA woman Dolours Price and high-profile loyalist Winston ‘Winkie’ Rea.

Now detectives want access to McIntyre’s recorded recollection of his own IRA activities as part of investigations into alleged terrorist offences stretching back more than 40 years.

A subpoena seeking copies of his interviews was served on Boston College by the British government.

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The move involved an ILOR setting out alleged offences being probed, including a bomb explosion at Rugby Avenue in Belfast in 1976, and membership of a proscribed organisation.

Although the tapes were released and flown from America, they remain under seal within the court pending the final outcome of the the legal challenge.

McIntyre, who is from Belfast but now lives in the Irish Republic, is seeking to judicially review the PSNI and Public Prosecution Service (PPS) for issuing an ILOR his lawyers claim is littered with inaccuracies.

Counsel for the PPS argued that mistaken information in the original correspondence had been corrected and regularised.

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Sir Declan, sitting with two other senior judges, held that the errors in the ILOR were due to “a distinct and surprising lack of care on the part of the PSNI and the PPS”.

However, he concluded that the flaws were not material to the request.

“We do not consider that the errors in the ILOR were indicative of bad faith,” the judge said.

Dismissing the challenge, he added: “Although we are minded to accept that there was interference with the private life of the applicant, we are satisfied that there was no breach of Article 8 of the (European) Convention (on Human Rights).”

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