The Police Service of Northern Ireland has won the latest round in its legal battle to listen to the tapes of a former Ulster loyalist prisoner from the controversial Boston College paramilitary archive.
Northern Ireland’s court of appeal rejected an appeal from Winston “Winkie” Rea to prevent the PSNI from listening to his taped testimony of life inside the loyalist terror group the Red Hand Commando during the Troubles.
But before detectives could take away the tapes, the court ordered on Friday morning that the material cannot be listened to until a final supreme court ruling on the Rea case.
Rea is one of dozens of loyalist and republican activists who gave interviews to the American university as part of its Belfast Project archive. All interviews with IRA and Ulster Volunteer Force paramilitaries were only supposed to be released when each individual who took part was dead.
However, the PSNI successfully pursued some of the material through the US courts as part of its investigations connected to unsolved crimes from the Troubles. These included archive interviews with IRA members allegedly with knowledge of the kidnapping, killing and secret burial of mother-of-ten Jean McConville in 1972.
The most explosive claims made on the Boston Colleges tapes so far has been the posthumous testimony of former Belfast IRA commander and hunger striker Brendan Hughes. In his interview Hughes alleged his former comrade and fellow Long Kesh prisoner Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin president, gave the order for Jean McConville to be “disappeared” or buried in secret, to prevent negative publicity for the republican movement over killing the widow the IRA accused of being an informer.
Adams has always denied any involvement in the McConville murder or ever having been in the IRA.
PSNI officers were in court in Belfast on Friday ready to take the Rea tapes, but the appeal court ruled that this part of the Boston College archive must remain in the Royal Courts of Justice in Belfast until the supreme court deals with the Rea case.
Following Friday’s court hearing, Ronan Lavery QC, Rea’s barrister, confirmed that his client was lodging an appeal to the supreme court in London to prevent the PSNI listening to his testimony.
Lord Justice Coghlin ruled that the tapes should not yet be handed over to police even though Rea lost his appeal.
A nephew of Gusty Spence, the founder of the modern UVF, Rea – like every other participant in the Belfast Project – was given assurances his interview would not be made public until after his death.
