British issued CR Gas for use against Long Kesh POWs

Former republican POWs are calling on the British Government to admit that it used deadly CR gas during riots in Long Kesh in 1974, when republican prisoners torched the notorious prison camp.

As the POWs fought with British soldiers, helicopters flying overhead dropped the gas in capsule form, while British troops on the ground sprayed the gas on prisoners.

The call comes after a British Sunday newspaper disclosed that papers from 1976, released under the British Government's freedom of information legislation, revealed that the use of 'CR' or Dibenzoxaxepine, a skin irritant ten times more powerful than other tear gases, was cleared to be used on POWs in Long Kesh from 1973 and was brought into the prison in July 1974.

More than 50 former republican prisoners, who suffered the effects of being sprayed by the gas, have either died as a result of cancer or have been diagnosed with the disease and campaigners say there is a link between these deaths and the use of the deadly gas in 1974.

"I'll never forget it," he recalled. " There were grown men screaming for their mothers. We all had experience of CS Gas, which was easy to avoid, but this was something different, you couldn't get away from it. I felt like I was on fire."

The effects of CR or Dibenzoxazepine are similar to the more common CS Gas, except that it also induces intense pain to exposed skin. The affected areas remain sensitive for days and become painful again after contact with water.

British armed forces minister John Spellar, in a written answer to Labour MP Ken Livingstone in 1998, denied that CR Gas had ever been used 'operationally'. Later, when asked by former shadow British Minister for the North Kevin McNamara, what quantity of CR Gas was used on 16 October 1974, Spellar again denied it was used by saying that "some 200 hand held spray devices containing 0.05% CR were held at Long Kesh".