Amal Clooney has joined a legal team representing 11 prisoners known as the “hooded men” who allege they were tortured by the British army at the start of the Northern Ireland Troubles.
She is working with other lawyers from Belfast, Dublin and London to persuade the European court of human rights to censure the UK over the men’s treatment and to officially brand it as torture.
Clooney, whose husband is Hollywood actor George, is an international human rights lawyer whose clients include WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is fighting extradition to Sweden. She has also represented the Greek state in its bid to force Britain to hand back the Parthenon marbles.
Clooney is expected to fly to Belfast soon for meetings with the legal firm heading up the hooded men’s case, Kevin Winters solicitors. She will also meet the ex-prisoners in the city.
In 1978 the European court of human rights admonished Britain for its inhuman and degrading treatment of the 14 prisoners but fell short of finding the UK guilty of torture.
The techniques inflicted on the detainees included hooding suspects, putting them into stress positions, sleep deprivation, food and water deprivation and the use of white noise. They were arrested as a result of the British policy of internment without trial in 1971 when thousands of suspects, mainly from Ireland’s nationalist-republican community, were rounded up.
A solicitor from the Belfast firm, Darragh Mackin, said: “We think Amal’s track record speaks for itself, as do all of the counsels’ CVs in this case. It is an extremely rare application, an interstate case before the European court.
“Therefore it is very significant that we have people with the background and experience of Amal and the other barristers who are involved making this application.”
In June last year an RTÉ documentary called The Torture Files said documents uncovered from the UK national archive revealed that the government knew its core argument – that the effects of techniques used on the hooded men were not severe or long-lasting – was untrue.
