Wife of ex-IRA member fears retaliation over release of Boston College files

'I live in constant fear of some form of IED being lobbed into the house’

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KERRY O'SHEA,

IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

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Carrie Twomey, wife of former IRA member Anthony McIntyre, fears for her and her family’s safety at the possibility of the release of interview transcripts of a former IRA member to federal prosecutors in Boston. The transcripts are a part of the Belfast Project, directed by Ed Moloney through Boston College and which McIntyre conducted interviews for.

The Boston Globe reports that Carrie Twomey lives with constant worry. She says, “As a result of Anthony being labeled an informer because of his previous work at Boston College, I live in constant fear of some form of IED being lobbed into the house or of him being shot in the street.”

McIntyre played a role in the Belfast Project at Boston College, which attempts to chronicle The Troubles in Northern Ireland that claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people. As a former IRA member, McIntyre conducted interviews which promised the subjects anonymity until their deaths.
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However, on Tuesday, Boston College was ordered by a federal judge to turn over transcripts relating to interviews with other former IRA member Dolours Price. Federal prosecutors “subpoenaed those items and others on behalf of British authorities investigating the 1972 disappearance and killing of Jean McConville, a mother of 10 in Belfast,” writes The Boston Globe.

The release of such materials will “infuriate” other former IRA members, who have already made McIntyre and wife Twomey a target. With McIntyre being labeled as an “informer,” Twomey recounts how excrement was smeared on their car and a neighbor’s front door.

In an affadavit, Twomey wrote: “I have no doubt but that this was intended for us."

Her affidavit was included in a motion filed by McIntyre and Moloney yesterday in which they requested “a stay to the court order on the Price documents, pending their appeal of a separate order barring them from acting as intervening parties in the case.”

When contacted for comment yesterday, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office had no comment citing that she had not seen the filings yet.

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