Torture victims put British Government in the dock

Internment swoop, 1971

g  BY PEADAR WHELAN

HUNDREDS of nationalists imprisoned by the British Government during the years of internment without trial between 1971 and 1975 may yet get their day in court.
A campaign spearheaded by Coiste na nIarchimí, the republican ex-prisoners’ support network, is trying to get the British Government into court to answer for the wrongs inflicted on the more than 2,000 men, women and children who were imprisoned in the various internment centres in the North during the early 1970s.
Coiste’s Jim McVeigh outlined to An Phoblacht how the organisation intends to force the British Government to acknowledge the injustice of internment and the effects of imprisonment without trial had on the individuals concerned and on the nationalist community as a whole.
McVeigh also stressed that the campaign is not only aimed at highlighting the fact that people were imprisoned without charge or trial - some for a number of years - but that the “whole process of arrest, interrogation and the conditions of imprisonment are also on the agenda”.
When internment without trial was introduced in August 1971 by the apartheid-style unionist regime in Stormont - with the blessing of the British Government in Westminster - they thought it would be the weapon that would defeat and destroy the IRA.
Operation Demetrius, as it was codenamed, instead turned out to be the touchpaper that would ignite the fire of resistance that would engulf the North for years.
In the aftermath of the first internment swoops, British troops killed and wounded dozens of nationalists throughout the North.
Up to 400 were arrested by the British Army and the RUC in the initial raids. They were subjected to brutal interrogations by their British Military Intelligence and RUC Special Branch inquisitors.
A group of 11 men were singled out for special treatment and subjected to specialist methods of torture and subjected to the British Army’s notorious “five techniques.”
The victims became known as ‘The Guinea Pigs’ or ‘The Hooded Men’ as they were forced to wear hoods during their ordeal. Only nationalist men were arrested in the first internment swoops but, over the years, the British Government signed internment orders (or interim custody orders, ‘ICOs’) for women as well as a number of schoolboys in Belfast.
The initial internment raids were directed exclusively against nationalists with the Stormont Government deciding that there was “no serious Protestant threat” and therefore allowing loyalists to remain free.
According to recently-released documents, the British Government urged unionist Prime Minister Brian Faulkner to include a few loyalists in the initial trawl to avoid being accused of sectarianism; Faulkner refused.
In the 18 months after internment was implemented, loyalists killed up to 120 people in their sectarian campaign but it wasn’t until February 1973, when the UDA killed Catholic workman Patrick Hennan as he travelled to work in east Belfast, that the British Government interned loyalists. Only 107 loyalists were interned compared to more than 1,800 nationalists.
Jim McVeigh says that one of the factors that encouraged Coiste to pursue a legal case against the British Government was the revelation that a number of men who were interned by the British in Kenya during the 1950s during the anti-colonial struggle there are pursuing a similar case.
“A key part of the internees’ case is the need to prove that senior British Government ministers approved of the physical and mental abuse of internees.”
Part of the internees’ case is being built around revelations in ‘top secret’ British Government documents that have now been uncovered some of which highlight how the then Attorney General, Sir Peter Rawlinson, had “given up hope” of defending the RUC’s actions during internment as “a lost cause”.
McVeigh also outlined how Coiste wants to look at the issues around the arrest and detention of schoolboys, and the conditions people endured while interned, including the use of CR gas when Long Kesh was burned in 1974.
“And, of course,” Jim McVeigh reminds people today about those interned, “these people were never charged with any offence and never found guilty of anything but their imprisonment had a profound effect on their lives when they were released. At the very least their ability to find work was harmed.”
In 1976, the Dublin Government took a case against the British to the European Commission of Human Rights on behalf of the 11 ‘Hooded Men’. Initially, the Commission found the British guilty of torture. However, on appeal the European Court found that the British Government had caused “intense physical and mental suffering” amounting to “inhuman and degrading treatment”.

The 5 torture techniques

4 HOODING
A prisoner’s head was covered with an “opaque cloth bag with no ventilation” (Amnesty International) except during interrogation or when in isolation. The prisoner would often also be stripped naked to enhance his feeling of vulnerability.
Some hooded men were thrown from moving helicopters, believing they were hundreds of feet in the air rather than a few feet off the ground.
4 WALL-STANDING
Prisoners were forced to stand balanced against a cell wall in the ‘search position’ for hours at a time, inducing painful muscle cramps. One prisoner was forced to remain in this position for 43.5 hours and there were at least six other recorded instances of prisoners being kept like this for more than 20 hours.
4 WHITE NOISE
The prisoner was placed in close proximity to the monotonous whine of machinery, such as a generator or compressor, for as long as six or seven days. At least one prisoner subjected to this treatment told Amnesty International that, having been driven to the brink of insanity by the noise, he had tried to commit suicide by banging his head against metal piping in his cell.
4 FOOD AND WATER DEPRIVATION
A strict regime of bread and water was enforced to erode victims’ strength.
4 SLEEP DEPRIVATION
Used prior to interrogation and often in tandem with wall-standing. Detainees were usually subjected to this conditioning over the course of about a week.