AN RTÉ documentary is to allege that the British State approved the torture of prisoners in the North of Ireland and then covered it up in court.
The Torture Files, which will be broadcast on RTÉ One tonight, will claim that the same brutal torture methods used by British troops in Iraq were honed in the North of Ireland in 1971.
Using documents from several government departments, the programme will show how 14 interned nationalists were the first to suffer the “five techniques” method.
The documentary will also reveal other techniques used on the group, known as “the hooded men”, who were selected for “in-depth interrogation”.
In some of its harrowing testimony, civil rights activist Paddy Joe McClean speaks of how he was told to get into a helicopter and blindfolded before being pushed out after it took off – only to realise it was just metres off the ground.
“I never belonged to a secret organisation and that was well-known by all the police who I was in contact with,” he says.
“I was delighted to get into the helicopter because I thought all my troubles were over and that I was being flown home. And then I was to be thrown out of the helicopter, blindfolded. So I thought that was the end.”
The so-called “five techniques” used on the 14 men included; hooding, wall-standing in stress positions for hours, ‘white noise’, sleep deprivation and food and water deprivation
The Torture Files will also broadcast allegations that the British Government covered up the torture in a bid to avoid being branded as one of the states involved in the illegal practice.
It will claim that when the Irish Government took Westminster to the European Court of Human Rights over the interrogation methods used in its prisons, relevant evidence was not disclosed.
The ECHR judged in 1978 that although the techniques were inhuman and degrading, they did not constitute torture.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Radio 1’s Morning Ireland show this morning, reporter Rita O’Reilly of RTÉ’s Investigations Unit said the programme would present new evidence that knowledge of the torture went as high as the cabinet of the British Government.
She added that there are “eerie parallels” between the techniques used in the North of Ireland during the early 1970s and those employed later by British and US soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
The documentary includes an interview with lawyer Phil Shiner, whose firm has represented more than 20 Iraqi families who claim their relatives were mistreated and murdered by British troops in an on-going public inquiry.
He claims the British Government has broken its promise to the European Court not to use the same techniques again.
“Ireland vs the UK should have been the end of the matter because we gave an undertaking through the Attorney General,” Mr Shiner says.
“That turned out to be complete nonsense and a pack of lies. The techniques were never prohibited. They were put under the radar. They continued to be used.”
The Torture Files will be broadcast tonight at 9.35pm on RTÉ One, RTÉ News Now and worldwide on the RTÉ Player.
