Boston College Ordered To Hand Over IRA Interviews To Investigators
BOSTON (AP) — Boston College must give police recorded interviews its researchers conducted with a convicted Irish Republican Army car bomber after an appeals court on Friday rejected an effort to stop their release.
The ruling by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal backed U.S. District Court Judge William Young's decision last year in the case of bomber Dolours Price, who spoke to Boston College researchers as part of an oral history project. The material will now be handed over to police by next month.
Price was one of several former IRA members who gave interviews as part of The Belfast Project between 2001 and 2006. Participants said the interviews were supposed to be secret until their deaths. But Northern Ireland police probing the IRA's 1972 killing of a Belfast woman want the recordings.
Young ordered Boston College to turn over interviews with Price and seven other former IRA members. Boston College didn't appeal Young's ruling on Price, but it's fighting his order on the seven other interviewees in an appeal separate from the one ruled on Friday.
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