Guildford is about a 35 minute train ride south of London
“Based on the true story”. How many times have you read that line? Often, said book or movie is an exaggeration, dramatization, or fabrication of an actual event. The movie “In the Name of the Father” is an example of a film based on a true story that took place during the Troubles.
The film is a portrayal of the case of the “Guildford Four”-three Irishmen and one English woman falsely convicted of bombing two pubs in England in 1974. The film took extensive liberties with the details, and I was able to get a glimpse into the true story while working on a piece for our June program.
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Alastair Logan is a solicitor (lawyer) in England who spent 15 years working to free the Guildford Four. I was able to spend a couple of hours with him in Guildford discussing the case.
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Sean Carberry Interrogation, Northern Ireland, Torture
Coming just on the heels of our release of “Interrogating Torture” is this news item from the Times of London. Six police officers in Enfield Burrough have been suspended pending an investigation of whether they waterboarded suspected drug dealers.
The torture claims are part of a wide-ranging investigation which also includes accusations that officers fabricated evidence and stole suspects’ property.
This sounds exactly like stories I heard in May as I traveled around London and Belfast – except I was investigating torture and coercive interrogation of IRA and loyalist paramilitary suspects in the 1970s. This kind of behavior was widespread during the early years of the Troubles, before a number of reforms that began to shift the focus of police work from interrogations and confessions to forensics and infiltration. During the Troubles, the UK gradually outlawed all practices of torture and coercive interrogation, but that has not meant the elimination of such practices.
In 2003 British troops in Basra violated the Geneva Conventions by abusing detainees.
During the court martial it was disclosed that a senior army legal adviser at brigade headquarters in Basra had sanctioned the use of hooding and stress positions for Iraqi detainees.
Again, the British government banned these practices in 1972, and yet soldiers employed these techniques and other abusive practices in Iraq. This brought up bad memories for many in the UK and seemed to fuel the attitude that I found there. I didn’t find anyone who argued that coercive interrogation practices had any place in the law enforcement toolkit today in the UK, and in general people I spoke with were ashamed that British forces had engaged in such activities given the legacy of Northern Ireland. It will be interesting to see how the legacy of the past plays into the investigation of this current case in London.
Sean Carberry Interrogation, Iraq, Northern Ireland, Torture
While the Troubles have passed, there are still troubling challenges ahead for Northern Ireland. There are small pockets of extremists on each side who periodically resort to violence, but for all intents and purposes the bombs and bullets have been replaced by ballot boxes and bully pulpits. The eleventh anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement passed this spring, and in that time Northern Ireland has been essentially at peace-but reconciliation is another matter.
(Listen to my segment on torture and coercive interrogation in Northern Ireland in our latest radio program: “Interrogating Torture”)
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Sean Carberry Interrogation, Northern Ireland, Torture, Truth and Reconciliation