US university Boston College has confirmed it will oppose legal moves to seize tapes from an ex-IRA volunteer turned academic for a controversial archive of former paramilitaries.
A subpoena was served on Boston College earlier this week from the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Public Prosecution Service in Belfast to hand over recordings from Dr Anthony McIntyre for the Belfast Project.
The college has now said it will file a motion to have the subpoena quashed.
The subpoena to obtain McIntyre’s personal interviews has been served under the terms of a UK-US legal assistance treaty and the Crime (International Co-operation) Act 2003.
Boston College has been ordered to appear at the John Joseph Moakley courthouse in the city on 6 May to deliver McIntyre’s interviews.
As well as conducting interviews with other former IRA members, McIntyre himself gave interviews to a guest researcher.
Set up in 2001, the Belfast project interviewed those directly involved in paramilitary violence between 1969 and 1994 in Northern Ireland. Participants were promised that the interviews would be released only after their death.
