Torture of prisoners was approved at Cabinet level

Posted by admin on June 9, 2014

British ministers sanctioned the use of torture against internees in the
north of Ireland in the early 1970s, the then British Home Secretary
Merlyn Rees admitted in 1977, it has emerged.

A letter by Rees to then Labour prime minister Jim Callaghan has been
discovered in the British National Archives in Kew by RTE’s
Investigation Unit. This week it broadcast ‘The Torture Files’, a Prime
Time documentary into the treatment of some of those interned without
trial.

The letter backs up earlier research by the Pat Finucane Centre, which
suggests the Dublin government and the European Court of Human Rights
were deliberately misled by London about the treatment of people
interned in 1971.

In August 1971, 340 men were arrested and interned. Fourteen of these
were subject to in-depth interrogation techniques which had been well
planned and involved specially trained British interrogators and RUC
Special Branch officers.

In 1976, the European Commission of Human Rights ruled the interrogation
methods used were torture. They comprised the so-called “five
techniques”, including white noise, sleep deprivation, hooding, being
forced to stand spreadeagled against a wall and being deprived of food
and water.  The men were also beaten and terrorised.

However, the British government appealed the judgment to the European
Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 1978 that while the interrogation
methods were “inhuman and degrading”, they did not amount to torture.

Relying on the official record of several government departments from
the British National Archives, the report reveals for the first time
significant evidence relating to the so-called ‘Hooded Men’.

The 14 men were arrested during internment in 1971 and removed for
special, so-called ‘in-depth interrogation’ where they were subjected to
a “psychological attack” according to a British army directive.

In his letter, Rees made clear members of the British Crown forces found
using such methods in that period could not be prosecuted because they
followed orders as a result of a “political decision”.

“I do not believe that the Irish government understand the nature of the
situation in 1971-1972,” he later wrote.

The Rees letter was written after a meeting in March 1977 between the
Irish attorney general, Declan Costello, and his British counterpart,
Samuel Silkin, during which Costello pressed the British to prosecute
RUC men and British soldiers who had carried out torture on republican
prisoners.

The five torture techniques were banned by the British Prime Minister
Edward Heath in 1972 but the programme shows how the techniques were
used thirty years later in 2003 by British battle groups stationed in
Iraq.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has called for the reopening of the case
of the ‘hooded men’.

He said the new evidence showed that the British government had lied to
the European Court of Human Rights “both on the severity of the methods
used on the men, their long term physical and psychological
consequences, on where these interrogations took place and who gave the
political authority and clearance for it to occur”.

“Not only was the European Court misled and lied to by the British
government but so too was the Irish government,” he added.

Mr Adams said he was disappointed that the 26-County Attorney General
Maire Whelan had refused to reopen the case following representation
from lawyers acting for the men.

Republican Sinn Fein’s Fergal Moore said the programme had confirmed
that the torture of Irish citizens was sanctioned at the highest levels
of the British cabinet and that the British “lied continuously” and
withheld evidence about it.

“This is further proof that there can be no true justice in Ireland
while British occupation remains,” he said.