Red Hand Commando boss Winston ‘Winky’ Irvine is challenging police attempts to access his Boston tape interviews

THE leader of the Red Hand Commando terror group Winston Churchill ‘Winky’ Rea has had his case thrown out at the Supreme Court in London.

His legal team was attempted to get a decision at the High Court in Belfast overturned to stop his Boston College interview tapes being handed over to the PSNI.

The former loyalist prisoner was one of dozens of former paramilitaries who provided testimonies to Boston College’s Belfast Project.

The interviews were given on the understanding that tapes would not be made public until after the deaths of the interviewees.

However, in 2013 detectives investigating the 1972 abduction and murder of Belfast mother-of-10 Jean McConville secured transcripts of former IRA woman Dolours Price’s account.

That material was handed over following court battles on both sides of the Atlantic.

Mr Rea wanted to try to stop the police in Northern Ireland from obtaining his testimony.

When the Court of Appeal in Belfast rejected Mr Rea’s claims that handing over the interviews would breach his right to privacy, he took his case to the Supreme Court.

However, judges refused permission to appeal, ruling that the case does not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance.

His lawyer Kevin Winters of KRW Law says he will now make an application for an urgent hearing at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.