>This week, the UK Supreme Court finally concluded that 14 men detained in Northern Ireland in 1971 were tortured.
• 18 Dec 2021
>By Rita O’Reilly Prime Time
>It took 50 years, but on Wednesday, the UK Supreme Court recognised that 14 men held without charge in Northern Ireland in 1971 were tortured.
>The court unanimously found it likely that “the deplorable treatment to which the Hooded Men were subjected at the hands of the security forces would be characterised today, applying the standards of 2021, as torture”.
>The “Hooded Men” were so called because they were hooded when singled out for “in-depth interrogation” after being picked up from their homes in August 1971.
>Britain had initiated a policy of interning people without charge or trial in Northern Ireland. On 9 August 1971, 342 people were arrested in one day. All were from the Catholic, nationalist community. Their crimes? Unknown.
>The Hooded Men were taken by helicopter to a purpose-designed interrogation facility
>Those arrested were first brought to detention camps at army bases and police barracks. Within two days, over a hundred were released. The rest were interned.
>Over three days, 21 people died – 17 shot by the British Army, including 11 in what is known as “the Ballymurphy massacre”.
>Over the following four years, almost 2,000 were interned.
>Many were put through special military “softening-up exercises” – beatings, deprivations and degrading treatment later catalogued in detail for the Irish Government as it prepared to take a case under the European Convention of Human Rights.
>But it was the special selection of 14 internees in August 1971 for days of in-depth interrogation that stood out.
>The story of those 14 detainees featured in the 2014 RTÉ Investigates documentary The Torture Files.
>Five main torture techniques, honed by the British army in former British colonies such as Aden, Malaysia, Borneo and Kenya, were used against them in a systematic, planned operation.
>We shall have to fight them at Strasbourg by every means open to us. Dublin will regret it
>The five techniques were hooding, hours of wall standing, white noise, sleep deprivation and deprivation of food and water.
>They were taken by helicopter to a purpose-designed interrogation facility – official records put its location at Ballykelly airbase near Derry – with its own operations room, monitoring room, noise generators, amplifiers, noise decibel specifications and standing orders.
>What happened there was code-named “Operation Calaba” and controlled and overseen by a team of 15 from the British Joint Services Interrogation Wing. The police force, the RUC Special Branch, were involved in a support role.
>The 14 men were a mixed bag, but they had one thing in common: No charges or convictions arose from their detention.
>Those arrested were first brought to detention camps at army bases and police barracks
>Ireland took their case and others to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for breaches of Article 3 of the European Convention, the absolute prohibition on torture.
>The state was advised by Professor Robert Daly, then a professor of psychiatry at University College Cork. He had documented the involvement of psychiatrists in perfecting methods of interrogation by torture.
>Prof Daly later told RTÉ Investigates that each of the five techniques used against the Hooded Men could bring about “psychosis and breakdown” on their own.
>”The package altogether was pretty disastrous, so it was rather sanitised to call it the five techniques,” he said.
>Many of those arrested were key figures in the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland
>An internationally renowned psychiatrist, Prof Jan Bastiaans, a specialist of trauma who had examined hundreds of captives of World War II prisons and concentration camps, also advised the government for the European case.
>”Interrogation in depth”, he wrote, “is a new term for brainwashing.”
>In his 1972 report on the techniques used in Northern Ireland, Prof Bastiaans wrote: “Nearly anyone can be reduced to a state of helplessness, dependency and even mental illness if the right techniques are used.”
>”The physical results of such treatment are severe enough, and some may be permanent”, he advised.
>”The mental effects are much more difficult to predict, but the effects of terror are seldom entirely transient.”
>Five main torture techniques were used against the men in a systematic, planned operation
>Britain fought the case hard. On 22 August 1973, its Conservative prime minister, Ted Heath, wrote: “We shall have to fight them at Strasbourg by every means open to us. Dublin will regret it.”
>In 1978, the European Court of Human Rights found Britain guilty of inhuman and degrading treatment, but not torture. “A special stigma”, it said, was attached to that word, and the treatment of the detainees did not cause suffering of the particular intensity and cruelty implied by the word torture.
>From 1972, the legal advice to the Heath administration was that what they had approved was illegal and that ministers could be liable to conspiracy.
>Documents show that civil servants and security personnel tried to shield ministers from being made accountable
>UK archives show just how far civil servants and security personnel went to shield cabinet ministers from being made accountable for the policy.
>Documents from those archives were revealed by RTÉ Investigates in June 2014.
>For the first time, the investigation, The Torture Files, identified senior ministers of the British cabinet of 1971 as having given informed authorisation for the planned, systematic operation of the ‘in-depth’ techniques.
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>Torture of Hooded Men recognised five decades on
>This week, the UK Supreme Court finally concluded that 14 men detained in Northern Ireland in 1971 were tortured.
• 18 Dec 2021
>By Rita O’Reilly Prime Time
>It took 50 years, but on Wednesday, the UK Supreme Court recognised that 14 men held without charge in Northern Ireland in 1971 were tortured.
>The court unanimously found it likely that “the deplorable treatment to which the Hooded Men were subjected at the hands of the security forces would be characterised today, applying the standards of 2021, as torture”.
>The “Hooded Men” were so called because they were hooded when singled out for “in-depth interrogation” after being picked up from their homes in August 1971.
>Britain had initiated a policy of interning people without charge or trial in Northern Ireland. On 9 August 1971, 342 people were arrested in one day. All were from the Catholic, nationalist community. Their crimes? Unknown.
>The Hooded Men were taken by helicopter to a purpose-designed interrogation facility
>Those arrested were first brought to detention camps at army bases and police barracks. Within two days, over a hundred were released. The rest were interned.
>Over three days, 21 people died – 17 shot by the British Army, including 11 in what is known as “the Ballymurphy massacre”.
>Over the following four years, almost 2,000 were interned.
>Many were put through special military “softening-up exercises” – beatings, deprivations and degrading treatment later catalogued in detail for the Irish Government as it prepared to take a case under the European Convention of Human Rights.
>But it was the special selection of 14 internees in August 1971 for days of in-depth interrogation that stood out.
>The story of those 14 detainees featured in the 2014 RTÉ Investigates documentary The Torture Files.
>Five main torture techniques, honed by the British army in former British colonies such as Aden, Malaysia, Borneo and Kenya, were used against them in a systematic, planned operation.
>We shall have to fight them at Strasbourg by every means open to us. Dublin will regret it
>The five techniques were hooding, hours of wall standing, white noise, sleep deprivation and deprivation of food and water.
>They were taken by helicopter to a purpose-designed interrogation facility – official records put its location at Ballykelly airbase near Derry – with its own operations room, monitoring room, noise generators, amplifiers, noise decibel specifications and standing orders.
>What happened there was code-named “Operation Calaba” and controlled and overseen by a team of 15 from the British Joint Services Interrogation Wing. The police force, the RUC Special Branch, were involved in a support role.
>The 14 men were a mixed bag, but they had one thing in common: No charges or convictions arose from their detention.
>Those arrested were first brought to detention camps at army bases and police barracks
>Ireland took their case and others to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for breaches of Article 3 of the European Convention, the absolute prohibition on torture.
>The state was advised by Professor Robert Daly, then a professor of psychiatry at University College Cork. He had documented the involvement of psychiatrists in perfecting methods of interrogation by torture.
>Prof Daly later told RTÉ Investigates that each of the five techniques used against the Hooded Men could bring about “psychosis and breakdown” on their own.
>”The package altogether was pretty disastrous, so it was rather sanitised to call it the five techniques,” he said.
>Many of those arrested were key figures in the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland
>An internationally renowned psychiatrist, Prof Jan Bastiaans, a specialist of trauma who had examined hundreds of captives of World War II prisons and concentration camps, also advised the government for the European case.
>”Interrogation in depth”, he wrote, “is a new term for brainwashing.”
>In his 1972 report on the techniques used in Northern Ireland, Prof Bastiaans wrote: “Nearly anyone can be reduced to a state of helplessness, dependency and even mental illness if the right techniques are used.”
>”The physical results of such treatment are severe enough, and some may be permanent”, he advised.
>”The mental effects are much more difficult to predict, but the effects of terror are seldom entirely transient.”
>Five main torture techniques were used against the men in a systematic, planned operation
>Britain fought the case hard. On 22 August 1973, its Conservative prime minister, Ted Heath, wrote: “We shall have to fight them at Strasbourg by every means open to us. Dublin will regret it.”
>In 1978, the European Court of Human Rights found Britain guilty of inhuman and degrading treatment, but not torture. “A special stigma”, it said, was attached to that word, and the treatment of the detainees did not cause suffering of the particular intensity and cruelty implied by the word torture.
>From 1972, the legal advice to the Heath administration was that what they had approved was illegal and that ministers could be liable to conspiracy.
>Documents show that civil servants and security personnel tried to shield ministers from being made accountable
>UK archives show just how far civil servants and security personnel went to shield cabinet ministers from being made accountable for the policy.
>Documents from those archives were revealed by RTÉ Investigates in June 2014.
>For the first time, the investigation, The Torture Files, identified senior ministers of the British cabinet of 1971 as having given informed authorisation for the planned, systematic operation of the ‘in-depth’ techniques.