US tapes illegally accessed by PSNI to pursue IRA pensioner

Posted by Jim on June 25, 2016

US tapes illegally accessed by PSNI to pursue IRA pensioner

Alleged evidence against veteran republican Ivor Bell has been
unlawfully obtained from America in breach of an international treaty, a
court has heard.

Mr Bell’s lawyer said the material obtained from the Boston College
history project should be excluded from a hearing to decide if the
79-year-old should stand trial.

Mr Bell, a former chief of staff in the IRA, faces charges of in
connection with the death of Jean McConville, who was killed in 1972
after being accused of being an IRA informer.

The case against Mr Bell centres on an interview he allegedly gave to US
researchers from Boston College as part of a project with IRA members
and loyalists about their roles in the conflict.

Although transcripts were not to be published until after the deaths of
those who took part, a US court ordered that the tapes should be handed
over to British state forces. It is alleged that Mr Bell is one of the
Boston interviewees based on a voice analysis.

Belfast Magistrates’ Court heard that a US Federal Court judge had
ordered disclosure of interviews in the case was to be limited to only
material relating to the death of Jean McConville. Defence lawyer Peter
Corrigan argued that the tapes handed over to the PSNI police went
beyond those restrictions. He is attempting to have the case thrown out.

“That evidence has been unlawfully obtained and should be excluded,” he
said. He told the court that material put to Br Bell during PSNI
interrogations was “way beyond” the Jean McConville case. “It was
unfairly obtained and in clear contravention of an international
treaty.”

Meanwhile, republican Anthony McIntyre, who was a lead researcher in the
project, is also battling an attempt to imprison him using a similar
“fishing” process of gathering possible evidence from the interviews.

Lawyers for Mr McIntyre have pointed to a series of errors in the PSNI’s
efforts to gain access to the tapes made by him at Boston College.

Senior judges in Belfast have now ordered the PSNI and Crown prosecutors
to clarify how an International Letter of Request (ILOR) for the
material wrongly included an erroneous conviction for armed robbery and
even blamed him for a bomb attack in which he was actually a victim.

With the case adjourned until September, the PSNI members due to travel
to Boston this week as part of a separate inquiry will not yet be able
to take possession of his recordings.