A WRITER who interviewed IRA bomber Dolours Price says he declined to take part in a new film on her life because justifying it would "stretch logic".
Anthony McIntyre said he does not support the new documentary I, Dolours – the brainchild of his former colleague, journalist Ed Moloney.
He said that being involved would for him "invalidate" the pair's long-standing criticisms of an interview with Price carried out by The Irish News.
The new film, to be released next month, features interview footage of Price and reconstructions using actors.
Price, who died in 2013, was jailed for her part in the IRA bombing of London's Old Bailey in 1973.
In an interview with The Irish News in 2010, she admitted to being involved in the 1972 murder of west Belfast mother Jean McConville – one of the so-called Disappeared who were abducted, murdered and secretly buried by republicans during the Troubles.
Some relatives of Mrs McConville yesterday evening held a demonstration against the film at a press screening at Movie House Cinemas on Belfast's Dublin Road.
Her son Jim McConville – who already watched the film at a special screening for relatives of the Disappeared – said he found it "retraumatising" and "in poor taste".
For years Mr McIntyre and Mr Moloney worked together on the Boston College project, in which ex-paramilitaries gave candid interviews on the condition that they would not be published until after their deaths.
Among those who took part were Price and former IRA commander Brendan 'The Dark' Hughes.
I, Dolours uses footage of a separate interview Mr Moloney recorded with Price in 2010, days after The Irish News's interview.
Mr Moloney and Mr McIntyre had been critical of the newspaper interview at the time it was published, saying that Price was mentally unwell.
However Mr Moloney, who produced and co-wrote I, Dolours, has defended the film's release.
He said his interview was "under circumstances that were very controlled" and Price was "very cogent throughout".
He added that it was recorded on the agreement that it would not be released until after her death.
Mr McIntyre, who worked as a researcher on the Boston College project, yesterday said he was "not criticising Ed for doing this film" but that he "can't support it".
"For me to have been involved in it in my view would invalidate the dispute I was involved in with The Irish News over a number of years," he said.
The former IRA prisoner said he was not involved in the 2010 interview and it was separate from the Boston project.
But he said it was stored at the college, and was seized along with the 2001-06 project's archives when the PSNI was later granted access through the US courts to its contents.
"I declined to have a role in this documentary, because I don't feel we can on the one hand criticise The Irish News and then on the other hand publish our own. It doesn't add up to me," he said.
"I would really have to stretch logic to justify this. I can only say from my own perspective."
He added: "I think the criticism of The Irish News from Ed's perspective certainly becomes invalid."
Mr Moloney said he carried out the 2010 interview with Price "because the alternative was that she was going to talk herself into an absolute disaster".
He added that he "made a promise to Dolours that her account of what took place would be made public".
