It was the night the music died: July 31, 1975. Exactly 30 years ago today. By 1975, the North might have imagined it had endured all possible horrors.
International Human Rights Delegation to Probe Collusion Allegations
PFC | 28 May 2004
An international delegation arrived in the North this weekend to probe allegations of collusion highlighted earlier this week in a BBC Spotlight Programme.
It’s September 1975. Opposition leader Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative spokesman on the North, Airey Neave, meet with Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, and Northern Secretary, Merlyn Rees. Two weeks earlier, two loyalist ambushes at fake security force checkpoints had resulted in five murders.
Memo of meeting between Attorney General and British Army
Two pages of a memo (AG 1971 p2 and AG 1971 p3) concerning the visit of a J.M. Parkin, Head of C2 at HQNI (British Army HQ) in the North to the then Attorney General Basil Kelly, a Unionist MP. In reference to any potential prosecutions of soldiers for the murder of civilians Parkin notes,
A diary of the meeting between J.M Parkin, Head of C2 and HQNI and Attorney General Basil Kelly and additional confirmation that the Attorney General fully understood that HQNI was telling him that he should not prosecute soldiers. In effect the military tail was wagging the legal dog. This meeting took place less than two months before Bloody Sunday
In 1978 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held that the British government had violated Article 3 of the European Commission on Human Rights in their treatment of 14 men in 1971. These "Hooded Men" had been selected for 5 techniques of "Deep Interrogation" - white noise, wall standing/ stress positions, sleep deprivation, bread and water diet, and hooding...
Brief for the British Attorney General (AG) in preparation for the 'Irish state case' (the Hooded Men) from September 1972 from DS10 (the Defence Secretariat at the MoD in London). Of interest is the disinformation provided to the AG, the most senior law officer in Britain, by the Ministry of Defence. At para 4 it is claimed that Ballykelly only...