Amnesty International has challenged the Irish government to take the UK back to the European court of human rights (ECHR) over the British security forces’ alleged torture of suspects during the Troubles.
The court ruled in 1978 that five interrogation techniques used on 14 men who were detained without trial in the early 1970s constituted inhuman and degrading treatment but not torture.
The techniques included hooding suspects, putting them into stress positions, sleep deprivation, food and water deprivation and the use of white noise. The 14 became known as the hooded men.
In June this year an RTE documentary alleged that the UK withheld evidence from the court, which Amnesty argues may have affected the outcome of the case. It also called on the UK to launch an independent investigation.
Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty’s director in Northern Ireland, said: “As well as a reopening of the Ireland v UK case, the UK has a long overdue responsibility to establishment an independent investigation into the torture of these men, and to hold to account those responsible. That has never happened. That is unacceptable, both for the men, their surviving family members and society more generally.”
One of the hooded men, Joe Clarke, said he wanted Ireland to mount a fresh case against Britain to seek justice for those of the 14 who had since died. “A fresh judgment might also mean that other governments would not use the flawed decision in our case to justify the torture of others around the world, as has happened in the years since 1978,” Clarke said.
The hooded men 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.
Other detainees separate from the 14 have told the Guardian that they were blindfolded, put on to army helicopters and thrown out of the aircraft almost at ground level but unaware of their altitude.
