[R-G] UK: Gerry Adams: I have been in torture photos, too

[Tim Murphy]

The Hippocratic oath:

  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.


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

Comment
  _________________________________________________________________

I have been in torture photos, too

The Abu Ghraib images are all too familiar to Irish republicans
Gerry Adams

Saturday June 5, 2004
The Guardian (London)

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.

7 Gerry Adams is president of Sinn Fiin and MP for Belfast West

sfpress at eircom.net

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