A European Commission on Human Rights report finds the British Government guilty of inhuman and degrading treatment in Northern Ireland.
The 8,400 page report says that the British Government was guilty of inhuman treatment but that the British did not discriminate against Catholics in Northern Ireland.
The report found that Britain was in breach of Article 3 of the Convention on Human Rights, which forbids torture or degrading and inhuman treatment.
The report specifically identifies that Britain was guilty of torture on 14 internees by using deep interrogation techniques including hooding, wall-standing, noise, deprivation of food and water and deprivation of sleep.
In 1971, internment was reintroduced by the then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Brian Faulkner. Paddy Joe McClean was one of the men arrested as a republican suspect and interned in 1971. Paddy Joe McClean along with thirteen others, became known as 'The Hooded Men', suffered what the European Court on Human Rights described as inhuman and degrading treatment at the hands of the British.
It was torture to us. We’d never want to go through it again.
Paddy Joe McClean is hopeful that the Irish government will press for charges against the senior RUC men who took part in the torture along with the British government who organised it.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 2 September 1976.
