NORTHERN Ireland’s police service said on Thursday night that it will sue to obtain all of the taped interviews of former IRA activists who described their careers to a Boston College oral history project.

NI police last year successfully sued the US college to obtain 11 interviews of Irish Republican Army veterans discussing the 1972 abduction, killing and secret burial of Jean McConville.

Those tapes were used as a basis for arresting Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. Mr Adams denied any involvement and was released without charge on May 4.

But the Police Service of Northern Ireland now says it wants the entire audio archive. It claimed that Serious Crime Branch detectives were pursuing this because of the police’s “statutory duty to investigate fully all matters of serious crime.”

But republicans have warned that concentration on the historical archives has more to do with anti-republican sentiment within the police service.