Summary of judgment - Boston Tapes Application Dismissed
| Jurisdiction | Northern Ireland |
| Neutral Citation | Summary of judgment - Boston Tapes Application Dismissed |
| Court | Court of Judicature (NI) |
| Date | 22 October 2018 |
Judicial Communications Office
1
22 October 2018
BOSTON TAPES APPLICATION DISMISSED
Summary of Judgment
The Divisional Court today dismissed an application for an injunction by Anthony McIntyre
restraining the Director of Public Prosecutions or the PSNI from making any further use of the
interview materials obtained from the “Boston Tapes” project.
Background
Anthony McIntyre (“the applicant”) was convicted of membership of a proscribed organisation, the
Irish Republican Army, and sentenced on 9 December 1974 to a period of two years’ imprisonment.
He was subsequently convicted of one count of murder, three counts of attempted murder, one
count of hijacking and one count of possession of a weapon with intent to endanger life. He was
sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 25 years. He appealed in
respect of the murder charge and in 1979 the recommended minimum term was reduced to 20 years’
imprisonment.
In 2001 the applicant became involved in an academic oral history project known as the “Belfast
Project" with the journalist and author Ed Moloney who was the project director. The project was
sponsored by Boston College, Massachusetts, USA. The object of the project was to collect and
preserve for academic research the recollections of members of republican and loyalist paramilitary
organisations. The methodology was to gather first-hand testimony by way of voice recordings from
participants. The project lasted from 2001 until May 2006. It began with interviews of former
members of the Provisional IRA and was subsequently expanded to include interviews with former
members of the Ulster Volunteer Force. The applicant was a researcher. He interviewed past
participants in the conflict recording their personal recollections. Each participant gave the content of
the recordings into the possession of Boston College for preservation. Access to the tapes was to be
restricted until after the interviewee's death except where they provided prior written authority for
their use otherwise. The applicant maintains that it was always understood that the contents of the
interviews might be accessible after death and that it was never envisaged that the contents would
be accessed by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (“PSNI”) for the purposes of criminal
investigation or prosecution.
In February 2011 mutual legal assistance was sought by the PSNI from the authorities in the USA to
obtain tapes held by Boston College relating to interviews conducted with Republican participants
touching upon the abduction and death of Jean McConville. This was resisted on the basis of the
risks to the well-being of the researchers but the US court concluded that some of the materials
should be provided to the UK authorities. In 2012 the applicant instituted proceedings in this
jurisdiction seeking to prevent the PSNI from obtaining confidential archive material provided to the
Trustees of Boston College Massachusetts USA but that application was dismissed in October 2012.
The applicant gave an interview to the BBC's Spotlight programme broadcast in May 2014 in which
he stated that he had provided an interview on tape to the organisers of the Boston College Project
and that he had exposed himself “to exactly the same risks as anybody else was exposed to”. The
PSNI interpreted that statement as suggesting that the applicant had disclosed criminal conduct in
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