British Army, police used waterboarding as a torture method in Northern Ireland

New BBC investigation ‘Inside the Torture Chamber’ reveals use by police and army

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Recreation of the torture method of waterboarding - new documentary claims Northern Irish police used this technique.

Photo by Amnesty International

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O Hamill reveals: “Somebody produced a towel, or what looked like a towel, and put this towel over my head and over my nose and mouth region and twisted it at the back and pulled my head down while they were holding my limbs.

“Somebody poured water over my nose and mouth region and they were shouting ‘breathe it in’. It was terrifying if I am truthful......at that time I thought they were actually going to kill me.”

The BBC programme says his is the only known allegation that members of the RUC used water boarding as an interrogation technique.

Former RUC man Roger McCallum says the allegations have unfairly damaged the reputation of the RUC.

McCallum said; “For many years many brave men and women served the community, all the community in Northern Ireland and in the vast majority of cases, 98, 99 per cent of cases, without any problems whatsoever.

“These allegations unfortunately will tarnish any organisation and it’s unfortunate that they are made and unfortunate that one or two folk in the past have been guilty of something, but certainly the vast majority of people who have served with pride in the RUC were guilty of nothing along those lines whatsoever.”

Amnesty International’s Northern Ireland director Patrick Corrigan believes there are sufficient grounds for an inquiry into allegations of the use of torture by the army and police, as well as republican and loyalist paramilitaries.

Corrigan said: “We believe that if you carry out a crime, a crime under national or international law, you should be held accountable for that.”

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