February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Anne Cadwallader
BELFAST — Irish Journalist Ed Moloney will know this week if prosecutors will order him to hand over confidential interview notes to the RUC when the High Court makes its ruling on Wednesday.
Moloney has already said that if he loses the case his lawyers will not persist in an appeal and the Crown will have to decide what punishment to impose on him and his paper, the Sunday Tribune.
Lawyers acting for the RUC say Moloney must hand over notes he took during an interview nine years ago with self-confessed UDA quartermaster and RUC informer William Stobie.
During the interview, Stobie admitted he provided the guns used to murder Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989. Moloney agreed not to publish the interview until Stobie gave permission, which he did earlier this year.
Stobie gave the interview with Moloney because he believed he had ceased to be of use to the RUC and that they might set up his assassination by his former colleagues in the UDA.
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In 1990, when he suspected the RUC were about to expose him to the UDA, he spoke with Moloney. Stobie made incriminating statements admitting his role to the RUC later that year, but he was only arrested and charged this year, when he said Moloney could publish the interview.
Police say they want to examine Moloney’s notes to see if they contain anything which was left out of the printed article. Moloney says his career will be at an end and his life in danger if he hands them over, and is refusing to do so.