SAS Ireland veteran Andy McNab defends Britain’s use of torture

SAS HERO and best-selling author ‘Andy McNab’ – who served in Ireland during the conflict – has defended the use of torture by British crown forces.

The special forces soldier was speaking after a US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigation last week revealed that brutal techniques used by CIA agents against Al-Qaeda suspects in the wake of the 9/11 bombings failed to produce useful intelligence.

The SAS ‘legend’ says there are a number of “quick, harmful, painful techniques” he would use on a captive.

The British Army 20-year veteran told The Times he “wouldn’t think twice” about inflicting pain on someone.

“I would deem it a moral responsibility to interrogate, to physically torture him to get the information out.

“Torture is a really blunt instrument but it is an instrument that, if it is used right, can yield results.

“There will always be legislation to make sure that we don't do it but we will do it.”

He says Iraqi interrogators tortured him when he was captured in January 1991 during the first Gulf War.

In Ireland, McNab – now a millionaire celebrity author on the back of his memoirs and fictional war stories – served with the Royal Green Jackets regiment in South Armagh and later reportedly two years undercover in Derry.

He has told the Belfast Telegraph that he “makes no apologies for what he did during what he calls the war in Northern Ireland”.

Evidence that British Intelligence was heavily involved in the torture conveyor belt has provoked a huge debate, including the use of British airports for ‘rendition’ flights by the CIA taking captives to be tortured at secret sites around the world.

Shannon Airport in Ireland has also been identified as a transit point for CIA and US military aircraft involved in the rendition process.

◼︎ THE Irish Government this month announced it is to ask the European Court of Human Rights to revise its judgment in the cases of the 14 ‘Hooded Men’ tortured by the British Army during internment in 1971.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan said that, on the basis of the new material uncovered by the Pat Finucane Centre and the recent RTÉ programme The Torture Files, the Irish Government will contend that the ill-treatment suffered by the ‘Hooded Men’ should be recognised as torture.

In the course of seven days they were hooded and subject to brutal in-depth interrogation techniques by the RUC Special Branch and the British Ministry of Defence’s Joint Services Interrogation Wing.

In 1971, the Irish Government took a case to Europe on behalf of ‘The Hooded Men’.

The European Commission on Human Rights in 1977 ruled that this was torture. The British Government appealed and the following year the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the men had not suffered torture but inhuman and degrading treatment.

The new evidence now shows that the British Government lied to the Irish Government, lied to the lawyers acting for the ‘Hooded Men,’ and lied to the ECHR.