The widow of a deceased member of the Hooded Men, tortured while interned in Northern Ireland in 1971, has said the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the British government should follow today's apology from the PSNI with an apology of their own.
Betty Shivers, 82, whose husband Pat Shivers was one of the Hooded Men, called on the Irish Government to pursue an apology from the British government.
"It’s now up to the British government and MOD to follow suit," she said.
"The Irish Government needs to call them out on it."
As far back as April 1972, a memo to UK ministers in the Ministry of Defence recorded that Pat Shivers "may have been interrogated in depth in error".
The admission was not disclosed to him or his relatives.
He died in 1985, aged 54.
In 2014, his widow told RTÉ Investigates that the torture "took over his mind and his life".
She said that afterwards, "he went through the motions" of life, but "you could see the fear in his eyes, and the horror of it, and that's how Pat lived his life until he died".
Official UK archive documents revealed by RTÉ showed the torture of the Hooded Men, 14 men interned without trial in Northern Ireland in August 1971, was sanctioned at the highest level of the British state.
Five techniques of sensory deprivation were used on them: hooding; wall standing; 'white noise’; sleep deprivation and deprivation of food and water.
In December 2021, the UK Supreme Court found: "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."
In a letter to the Hooded Men or their surviving next of kin this week, the PSNI acknowledged that finding.
In a letter of 9 June, addressed to Betty Shivers through the solicitor for the Hooded Men, Mr Darragh Mackin of Phoenix Law, the Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI, Alan Todd wrote; "We wish to acknowledge that the treatment that Pat received was not acceptable at that time and is not acceptable by modern standards of policing. We would like to convey an apology to you, the family, and the representatives of Pat, for the actions and omissions of police officers at that time."
British national archive records revealed by RTÉ Investigates showed the state-sanctioned and systematic nature of the operation. The process was codenamed Operation Calaba; it took place in a purpose-built unit at Ballykelly air base, near Derry, and it was controlled and overseen by a team of 15 members of the British Joint Services Intelligence Wing (JSIW), with the RUC Special Branch tasked to carry out much of the 'in depth interrogation'.
Watch: RTÉ Investigates: The Torture Files
The unit had an Operations Room, from where the treatment was monitored, and its own Standing Orders. It was designed following training of selected RUC Special Branch personnel at the Joint Services Intelligence Wing base, in Ashford, Kent.
Details of the operation were notified to and sanctioned by ministers. On 9 August, 1971, the military assistant to the Vice Chief of the General Staff, the deputy head of the British army, wrote to the parliamentary secretary of the then Secretary of State for Defence, Mr Peter Carrington, that he, "would like the Secretary of State to be aware" that the army interrogation team being sent to Northern Ireland for the operation would consist of four officers, eight support staff and three technicians. The memo stated, "it is not intended that they should carry out any interrogation themselves, but will provide intelligence support…"
On 20 October, 1971, Peter Carrington, the secretary of state, met with the Chief of the General Staff and the General Officer Commanding (GOC), Northern Ireland to discuss the fallout from the operation.
Ministry of Defence minutes of the meeting note the Chief of the General Staff was "... anxious to have guidance on what to say to the RUC Special Branch about how far HMG would be able to protect them from having to bear the brunt of any criticisms of interrogation methods…"
Peter Carrington assured the meeting it had been his "...firm intention, that the army's participation in the interrogation process be confined to providing backup, in the sense of expert advice and technical support".
The GOC responded that he "had certainly encouraged the RUC to adopt the interrogation methods advocated by the JSIW, in preference to the RUC’s own rather cruder methods".
UK archive records show that concern that the RUC, which preceded the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), would be left shouldering the blame for the treatment of the Hooded Men, continued to feature in internal UK state deliberations as an inter-state case taken by Ireland against the UK at the European Court of Human Rights proceeded. The case centred on human rights abuses in Northern Ireland in that period, including the treatment of the Hooded Men.
In 2014, RTÉ Investigates revealed the view of a later, Labour secretary of state, that summed up how in 1971/72, "a political decision was taken" to use torture in Northern Ireland.
A letter from then home secretary Merlyn Rees to his prime minister James Callaghan on 31 March 1977 stated: "It is my view (confirmed by Brian Faulkner before his death) that the decision to use methods of torture in Northern Ireland in 1971/72 was taken by Ministers, in particular Lord Carrington, then Secretary of State for Defence."
The Hooded Men were: Pat Shivers, Seán McKenna, Gerard McKerr, PJ McClean, Joe Clarke, Jim Auld, Michael Donnelly, Kevin Hannaway, Francis McGuigan, Patrick McNally, Michael Montgomery, Davy Rodgers, Liam Shannon and Brian Turley.
Mr Clarke received the PSNI apology on his death bed. He died this week.
