[A-List] I have been in torture photos, too - Gerry Adams

[Macdonald Stainsby]

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1231978,00.html

The Guardian	  Saturday June 5, 2004

I have been in torture photos, too

The Abu Ghraib images are all too familiar to Irish republicans

By Gerry Adams

News of the ill-treatment of prisoners in Iraq created no great surprise in
republican Ireland. We have seen and heard it all before. Some of us have
even survived that type of treatment. Suggestions that the brutality in Iraq
was meted out by a few miscreants aren't even seriously entertained here. We
have seen and heard all that before as well. But our experience is that,
while individuals may bring a particular impact to their work, they do so
within interrogative practices authorised by their superiors.

For example, the interrogation techniques which were used following the
internment swoops in the north of Ireland in 1971 were taught to the RUC by
British military officers. Someone authorised this. The first internment
swoops, "Operation Demetrius", saw hundreds of people systematically beaten
and forced to run the gauntlet of war dogs, batons and boots.

Some were stripped naked and had black hessian bags placed over their heads.
These bags kept out all light and extended down over the head to the
shoulders. As the men stood spread-eagled against the wall, their legs were
kicked out from under them. They were beaten with batons and fists on the
testicles and kidneys and kicked between the legs. Radiators and electric
fires were placed under them as they were stretched over benches. Arms were
twisted, fingers were twisted, ribs were pummelled, objects were shoved up
the anus, they were burned with matches and treated to games of Russian
roulette. Some of them were taken up in helicopters and flung out, thinking
that they were high in the sky when they were only five or six feet off the
ground. All the time they were hooded, handcuffed and subjected to a
high-pitched unrelenting noise.

This was later described as extra-sensory deprivation. It went on for days.
During this process some of them were photographed in the nude.

And although these cases ended up in Europe, and the British government paid
thousands in compensation, it didn't stop the torture and ill-treatment of
detainees. It just made the British government and its military and
intelligence agencies more careful about how they carried it out and ensured
that they changed the laws to protect the torturers and make it very
difficult to expose the guilty.

I have been arrested a few times and interrogated on each occasion by a
mixture of RUC or British army personnel. The first time was in Palace
Barracks in 1972. I was placed in a cubicle in a barracks-style wooden hut
and made to face a wall of boards with holes in it, which had the effect of
inducing images, shapes and shadows. There were other detainees in the rest
of the cubicles. Though I didn't see them I could hear the screaming and
shouting. I presumed they got the same treatment as me, punches to the back
of the head, ears, small of the back, between the legs. From this room, over
a period of days, I was taken back and forth to interrogation rooms.

On these journeys my captors went to very elaborate lengths to make sure
that I saw nobody and that no one saw me. I was literally bounced off walls
and into doorways. Once I was told I had to be fingerprinted, and when my
hands were forcibly outstretched over a table, a screaming, shouting and
apparently deranged man in a blood-stained apron came at me armed with a
hatchet.

Another time my captors tried to administer what they called a truth drug.

Once a berserk man came into the room yelling and shouting. He pulled a gun
and made as if he was trying to shoot at me while others restrained him.

In between these episodes I was put up against a wall, spread-eagled and
beaten soundly around the kidneys and up between the legs, on my back and on
the backs of my legs. The beating was systematic and quite clinical. There
was no anger in it.

During my days in Palace Barracks I tried to make a formal complaint about
my ill-treatment. My interrogators ignored this and the uniformed RUC
officers also ignored my demand when I was handed over to them. Eventually,
however, I was permitted to make a formal complaint before leaving. But when
I was taken to fill out a form I was confronted by a number of large
baton-wielding redcaps who sought to dissuade me from complaining. I knew I
was leaving so I ignored them and filled in the form.

Some years later I was arrested again, this time with some friends. We were
taken to a local RUC barracks on the Springfield Road. There I was taken
into a cell and beaten for what seemed to be an endless time. All the people
who beat me were in plain clothes. They had English accents.

After the first initial flurry, which I resisted briefly, the beating became
a dogged punching and kicking match with me as the punch bag. I was forced
into the search position, palms against the walls, body at an acute angle,
legs well spread. They beat me systematically. I fell to the ground. Buckets
of water were flung over me. I was stripped naked. Once I was aroused from
unconsciousness by a British army doctor. He seemed concerned about damage
to my kidneys. After he examined me he left and the beatings began again. At
one point a plastic bucket was placed over my head. I was left in the
company of two uniformed British soldiers. I could see their camouflage
trousers and heavy boots from beneath the rim of the bucket. One of them
stubbed his cigarette out on my wrist. His mate rebuked him.

When the interrogators returned they were in a totally different mood and
very friendly. I was given my clothes back, parts of them still damp. One of
them even combed my hair. I could barely walk upright and I was very badly
marked. In the barrack yard I was reunited with my friends and photographs
were taken of us with our arresting party. For a short time other British
soldiers, individually and in groups, posed beside us. Someone even videoed
the proceedings.

We were to learn from all the banter that there was a bounty for the
soldiers who captured us. According to them we were on an "A" list, that is
to be shot on sight. The various regiments kept a book which had accumulated
considerable booty for whoever succeeded in apprehending us, dead or alive.
>From the craic in the barracks yard it was obvious that the lucky ones had
won a considerable prize.

So for some time we were photographed in the company of young, noisy,
exuberant squaddies. I'm sure we were not a pretty sight. I'm also sure that
they were grinning as much as the soldiers in the photographs we have all
seen recently. Our photos were never published, but somewhere, in some
regimental museum or in the top of somebody's wardrobe or in the bottom of a
drawer, there are photographs of me and my friends and our captors. To the
victor, the spoils.

• Gerry Adams is president of Sinn Féin and MP for Belfast West

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-- 
Macdonald Stainsby
http://independentmedia.ca/survivingcanada
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
    --Bertholt Brecht.