A subpoena has been received by Boston College for the tapes of interviews with Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price, both one-time senior IRA figures, carried out by researchers for an oral history project. The suppoena has been issued by US prosecutors acting on a request from UK officials.
Hughes, a convicted IRA man who was once arrested with Mr Adams, died in 2008. A book “Voices from the Grave” by Ed Moloney, based on the interviews, quoted him as identifying Mr Adams, who has always denied ever being a member of the IRA, was commander of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade in 1972.
Jean McConville, a mother of 10, was abducted by the IRA that year under apparent suspicion of being an informer. Her fate remained a mystery until her bones were discovered on a County Louth beach in 2003.
In the book, Hughes was quoted as saying: "There was only one man whom gave the order for the woman [Mrs McConville] to be executed. That man is now the head of Sinn Fein."
Price, like Hughes, publicly broke with Mr Adams and Sinn Fein in the 1990s in protest at the “peace process” that led to 1998 Good Friday Agreement. In 2010, she gave an interview to the “Irish News”, which ran a story stating she was believed to have been “privy to details of the final days” of Mrs McConville.
