Chris Bray: Boston College Subpoenas Challenged in Belfast Courts Judicial Review

Former Belfast Project researcher Anthony McIntyre has filed a new legal challenge in Northern Ireland against the Boston College IRA subpoenas. While the long fight against the subpoenas has so far taken place in American courts, this effort opens a new front, challenging the subpoenas in the UK. The initial brief in this new lawsuit appears at the bottom of this post.

Most immediately, the brief asks the court to issue an interim injunction that would forbid the PSNI or the government of the UK from “taking custody” of the subpoenaed materials while the court considers the legal issues in the case. The outcome of that request should be clear in a very few days, while two legal appeals remain pending in the US — one of which won’t even be argued before September.

But the separate appeal filed by Belfast Project researchers Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre was heard back in May, and should decided any day, now. It’s a broader appeal than the one filed by Boston College, covering a wider range of subpoenaed material. So the immediate issuance of a temporary injunction in the UK could become significant in the very near future if Moloney and McIntyre lose their appeal in Boston — it would mean that the Department of Justice would get confidential IRA interviews on behalf of the UK that officials in the UK would be forbidden to accept.


Continue Reading

21 comments:

  1. Not really sure how you expect this to pan out a cara,it seems complicated,I mean this is all politically motivated and it will be a political decision in the end that resolves it,bringing the securocrat led so called justice system from here into the equation seems to me to be a dodgy way to go , but I wish you and Ed well and I,m sure you have thought out your strategy well,

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mackers,
    Maybe Ciaran Kearney could come to Adam's aid, he was able to portray his boss as one step up from sainthood after the truthful expose about his dire representation of the voters in West Belfast.
    Having said that, I don't believe for a second that Brendan was about sowing the seeds for his former bosses prosecution.
    I think Adams by his own contrived Pilot act, orchestrated his own downfall in Republican terms.
    Should he face the courts because Boston has shamefully reneged, absolutely not.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nuala,

    Not a chance of Brendan ever having wanted Gerry prosecuted. But he did want a much more accurate narrative out there than what Gerry was offering.

    In terms of the seeds being sewn I think there is an irony in Gerry having called for information about Jean McConville to be given to the PSNI.

    If Gerry wants to give evidence about Mrs McConville he will be breaking the IRA code but we won't hear Big Bad Bob say much about that either in public or private.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gerry is in the enviable position ,that is if all goes bellyup he can pass the buck to trickey dickey as he has done previously,and sure in the knowledge that his Gollum like servant will like Sean Brady keep stump.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mackers,
    There is no doubt Adams has come unstuck through his own doing.
    I think, he broke with army convention when both he and mc guinness actively encouraged the passing on of information.

    ReplyDelete
  6. From Helen McClafferty:

    This decision is absolutely disgraceful. What is to be gained by turning over the Belfast Project oral history tapes to the (RUC/PSNI) British government? What deal has been made between the US andBritish governments that our courts have agreed to allow this blatant intrusionon our academic freedoms to be trampled on by a foreign government, no less thesame government whose track record of continued civil and human rights abuses,post GFA, abound in the north of Ireland. The British are devious and evil in their dealings and nothing good cancome of this decision.

    What we need is political intervention and we must address this now.

    ReplyDelete
  7. They are hardly going to beat a confession out of the bearded one unlike those who went before, and I mean either side of the border here, so other than the Shipman double have his culinary adventures interrupted what the point in his arrest would be beyond me ,if the brits wanted him out of the way he would have been gone long ago, however as we all know he is still a prize asset for now .

    ReplyDelete