'Hooded Men': Ex-Army head Mike Jackson questions torture claims

A former professional head of the Army has questioned whether the treatment of 14 men interned during the Troubles amounted to torture.

The men, known as the Hooded Men, were interned without trial in 1971.

Gen Sir Mike Jackson made the remarks in a BBC documentary detailing the men’s experience.

In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the methods used “would be characterised today” as torture.

During their Army detention, the men said they were forced to listen to constant loud static noise, deprived of sleep, food and water, forced to stand in a stress position and beaten if they fell.

They also said they were hooded and thrown from helicopters a short distance off the ground, having been told they were hundreds of feet in the air.

Sir Mike, who was a captain with 1 Para from 1970 to 1973, said: “As to whether or not, in extremis, physical violence on a prisoner of war or a detainee is ever acceptable is a very important question.

“Torture is illegal. [There is] a very clear convention on the matter.

“Whether depriving somebody of sleep for two nights, should or should not be illegal, I’m a bit more uncertain.”

Sir Mike claimed he was not in a position to argue with the “perception” of the 14 men and how they felt about their treatment.

He said: “This question, can non-violent ill-treatment equal torture, is very philosophical as well as legal.”

“You might be better asking a bishop on such matters.”

In 1976 the European Commission of Human Rights ruled that the five techniques used on the men amounted to torture.

This ruling was later referred to the European Court of Human Rights in 1978, which held that the UK had carried out inhuman and degrading treatment, but fell short of defining it as torture.

In 2019, Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan, Northern Ireland’s most senior judge, said their treatment “would, if it occurred today, properly be characterised as torture”.

Jim Auld was taken away by soldiers as he returned to his home in west Belfast, before being transferred to an interrogation centre in County Londonderry by helicopter.

“After it crossed north Belfast, for me it might as well have been Outer Mongolia, it was that far away from where my normal haunts were,” he said.

“They brought me into a compound and there were two lines of soldiers, about 30 of them, about 15 on each side and there were two or three dogs at the beginning of it barking.

“They were all standing with lumps of wood and baseball bats and that sort of thing and they pushed me in there and each of them, as I was running by, battered me.

“When I fell, the guy at the back was keeping the dog off me, but letting the dog get close to me so I had to hurry up and get up.

“As I got up I had to go through that until the end and they were all laughing and joking and swearing and cursing at me.”

Raymond White, who headed the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s special branch, told the BBC the treatment the Hooded Men underwent “came very close to the border line” between “dehumanising treatment” and torture.

“Torture to me, in a sense, was what the like of the Nazis were doing with the French resistance and people like that. There was gross physical violence, people were actually beaten to death,” he said

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

However, he said it would be “right and proper” for the government and Police Service of Northern Ireland to apologise to the men if they accept the Supreme Court ruling that the techniques used amounted to torture.

You can watch Hooded Men – Britain’s Torture Playbook on Monday at 22:40 on BBC One or on the BBC iPlayer.