BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON – The US Supreme Court has temporarily blocked Boston College from turning over to the government of Northern Ireland interviews that academic researchers recorded with a former Irish Republic Army member.
On Oct. 17, the high court stayed a lower court order that the school give the Justice Department portions of recorded interviews with convicted IRA car bomber Dolours Price. Price and other former IRA members were interviewed between 2001 and 2006 as part of The Belfast Project — a resource for journalists, scholars and historians studying the long conflict in Northern Ireland known as “The Troubles.”
The stay granted by Justice Stephen Breyer ends Nov. 16 if there is no formal appeal to the Supreme Court.
Citing international mutual assistance treaties, the Justice Department wants to turn the records over to the Northern Ireland police, a move that has evoked strident opposition from those who fear that such a move will damage the peace process in the North.
Technically, according to a Reuters dispatch, the matter before the Supreme Court concerns only interviews with Dolours Price, an IRA member who was jailed for her part in the 1973 bombing of London’s Old Bailey courthouse that injured more than 200 people. The court’s decision in her case will likely determine the fate of the other interview material, said Eamonn Dornan, an attorney for the researchers.