'Hooded Men' insist treatment was torture in new BBC NI documentary

In what became known as the ‘Hooded Men’ case, 14 people, suspected of being members of the fledgling Provisional IRA, were selected from hundreds of internees in 1971 for ‘deep interrogation.’

The questioning was accompanied by the ‘five techniques’: white noise; wall-standing; hooding, and deprivation of food and sleep.

Lawyers for the men have repeatedly sought to have their treatment recognised as illegal torture.

However, the courts have ruled that while their experience was “inhuman and degrading,” it fell short of the torture threshold.

In December 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the PSNI was under no obligation to investigate the high-level authorisation of the men’s interrogation under the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture.

The BBC has described the men’s treatment as “one of the darkest episodes” in the history of UK intelligence operations.

The programme makers said: “Through intimate first-hand testimony from the Hooded Men, including access to their legal battle for their treatment to be recognised as torture in the UK’s Supreme Court; interviews with senior members of the British security forces; and declassified government documents, the film reveals the full horror of one of the darkest episodes in British intelligence history.”

One of those interviewed on camera is former army general Mike Jackson.

He said: “Torture is illegal. Whether depriving somebody of sleep for two nights should or should not be illegal I am a bit more uncertain.”

Former assistant chief constable and head of Special Branch Raymond White was a sergeant when internment was introduced.

Mr White suggests the treatment “came very close to the borderline” where inhuman treatment meets torture, but did not cross that line.

"Torture to me, in a sense, was the like of what the Nazis were doing with French Resistance… where there was gross physical violence.

"The treatment [the men] received you could say came very close to the borderline that must be there between de-humanising treatment and actual torture.

"I don’t think, in the round, that it actually was torture as I would have described it at the time or since,” he said.

Mr White does, however, accept that in the chaos of the early 70s Troubles, “if mistakes were made, or people were wrongly treated then… an apology for what happened is right and proper”.

The Supreme Court ruling in December 2021 said it would be unfair to retrospectively require adherence to the requirements of the Human Rights Act, which became law in the UK in 2000.

Lord Hodge, the deputy president of the UK Supreme Court, argued: “The general presumption is that a statute which creates rights and obligations does not have retrospective effect. This reflects values of fairness, legal certainty and the rule of law.

“It is desirable that people, including public officials and public authorities, should be able to determine their legal rights and obligations at the time of acting or omitting to act.

“It is generally unfair to treat people as subject to obligations of which they were not on notice at the time.”

The Hooded Men is on BBC iPlayer and BBC One NI on January 23 at 10.40pm.