Nearly everyone has heard of 'The Troubles', and the IRA (Irish Republican Army). Jean McConville was a woman from Norther Ireland who, in 1972, was abducted and killed by the Provisional IRA and secretly buried on a beach in the Republic of Ireland. The IRA subsequently claimed that she has been passing information on republican activities to British security forces. An investigation by the Police Ombudsman of Norther Ireland rejected these claims. McConville's body was recovered in 2003. The crime has not been solved.
Boston College interviewed seven former IRA members, and now have been ordered, by a federal judge, to hand these interviews over to the United States government officials. America has a treaty with the United Kingdom so these interviews will be handed to British authorities investing the 1972 homicide, of Jean McConville
The case involves an oral history project that recorded recollections from combatants in the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland.
Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn said yesterday the school is appealing to the 1st US District Court of Appeals because it wants a higher court to consider if the value of the interviews to a criminal investigation in Northern Ireland outweighs the protection of confidential academic research.
Dunn said project director Ed Moloney signed a contract with Boston College that said access to interviewees' information would be kept confidential, to the extent US law allows, until after participants died.
The university spokesman said a federal court judge listened to the confidential tapes before finding that some mentioned the 1972 killing of Jean McConville and should be turned over to authorities. Acting for British investigators, the US Attorney's Office filed subpoenas last year for all tapes of IRA members talking about McConville, who was a Belfast mother of 10.
The McConville case is controversial because of allegations Sinn Fein political party leader Gerry Adams led the unit of the now-outlawed IRA that ordered her execution.
In December, the judge ruled Boston College had to turn over the interviews of former IRA member Dolours Price because she talks about her part in McConville's killing.
Boston College didn't appeal that ruling, with Dunn, saying then the reason was that Price had given a widely publicised media interview in Ireland implicating herself and Adams in the killing.
Last month the same judge found that materials involving seven more project interviewees who talked about McConville's killing also should be disclosed.
Boston College has already handed over interview materials from late IRA member Brendan Hughes, who died in 2008. Hughes told an oral project interviewer he supervised McConville's "arrest" for allegedly being a British spy. He also said Adams commanded a unit responsible for that and other disappearances.
Adams said in a January interview with Irish state broadcaster RTE he didn't fear more ex-IRA members would identify him as their former leader. Boston College expects the court to hear its appeals case in June.
Sources: nzherald.co.nz
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