Senior RUC Officer on Interrogation

7/29/2019 Senior RUC Officer on Interrogation

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Copyright Dominic Streatfeild 2010. All rights reserved

www.dominicstreatfeild.com

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Senior Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer on interrogation

Our techniques of interrogation which we used in the early - the start of the conflict

here [in Northern Ireland] - we used the army techniques of sleep deprivation, white

noise and the hooding thing that is now very much in vogue in Iraq. Its funny, theway those things come back around. Those techniques we used here in Internment in

1971 as a way of disorientating a person to make them talk. [It was] just a pressurised

interrogation.

Hooding, white noise and wall-standing were used systematically at that point?

After the troops came onto the streets of Derry, the military took primacy over the

police. We really had no interrogation: we were just police - well a paramilitary

police, an armed police. Thats the only difference and we had a land border to secure,

we had big border guards down as well, stationed on the border because of the

conflict with the 26 counties. And we had no background at all, and thats why

Internment was so badly handled. We nearly arrested anybody who played for a

Gaelic football team! So the military had to teach us how to do interrogation. We did

questioning and generally crime was quite low in Northern Ireland and everybody

usually did it and there wasnt much of a chance of interrogation.

So on interrogation and when they were taken to Palace Barracks in Holywood, I

think everybody got a claim out of it and it went to the European Court of Human

Rights. There certainly was white noise used, there certainly was hoods used, there

certainly was standing for a long time. And sometimes we carried those things

through to interrogations in Castlereagh. More the standing with your hands againstthe wall for long, long periods.

But the terrorists soon became very, very good at countering it. We would, at the

time, the guys that you were interrogating would not speak if you had them for 7 days.

They just would not speak.

Even with no sleep?

No, what came in after the European Convention of Human rights - the whole system

was let down quite clearly, and its why instead of using interrogation to break the

terrorists we started to use intelligence. What happened was the well from theCastlereagh and the holding centres dried up in that you couldnt use Sleep

Deprivation, you could not question between midnight and 8am in the morning unless

it was under very specific circumstances like the ticking bomb scenario. But you

couldnt do it otherwise. There had to be regular meal breaks, they asked to go to the

toilet, they had to be allowed to go and there was a form came in for that, and that

actually was a forerunner to PACE which came in across the UK.

Im not saying that some of them didnt get the odd thump at Castlereagh or the odd

slapping, but there wasnt the systematic beating which they would make you think


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there was. And there wasnt the horror stories that came out. Theyd come in, think

they were going to be tortured, think there were going to be electrodes attached to

their testicles, thinking there were going to be people coming with rubber hoses to

beat them up. And all the rough handling at Castlereagh, all the sensory deprivation,

and all the naked [stuff], standing - the European Court of Human rights, when they

said it was a breach of their human rights, it was all altered in 76, 77, 78. Thats whywe moved towards the intelligence-led policing model. We had to because

interrogations were not getting the results.

I remember with ****** [a famous IRA suspect] one time, I said Look, well get this

sorted out. I dont want to arrest you and have you taken to Castlereagh. And he said

Castlereagh holds no tigers for me. Because all the teeth that Castlereagh had had

been systematically pulled. And you know, this is the Americans seem to have made

all the exact same mistakes that the British government made in the early 70s. They

have now made in Guantanamo Bay and these other prisons. Their interrogation: most

of the people theyre interrogating are internees, the same as the internees we were

interrogating. Then we turned it on because whenever a person was taken toHolywood Palace Barracks, thats where the holding centre was in internment in

1971. I was only a part time reserve constable then, I was not a full-time member of

the police service but from the stories that you hear, and from people who were

involved in it, white noise was used. Hooding was used. Long standing was used.

And there was another technique. They used to put them into helicopters and then

took them up high. Then they pushed them out when they were only two or three feet

above the ground. You know, they disoriented them. They were hooded. They were in

a helicopter. The helicopter took off, then bounced about and came down to a couple

of feet again, you know, so that the people were so disoriented that they didnt know

where they were. Then they threw them out as if they were throwing them out from a

height.

Were these techniques that had come from the British army?

Oh aye. That was a standard military interrogation technique then. It wasnt that was

the use at the time. And I would say during the second world war, they didnt have

helicopters, but where that developed, whether that developed during the Cold War

period, but there were certainly interrogation techniques built up and grew. And sleep

deprivation and white noise and disorientation and all those things that confuse a

person certainly - it was taught. Thats what the army taught the police.

I heard that the RUC were specifically sent to the UK for a course on how to do this

stuff?

I think it was more of a picked-up thing. Because up until 1976 the military had

primacy. If you remember the early time of conflict, the military were allowed to

arrest a person and keep them for four hours. And the idea of that 4 hours was just

to give them time to hand them over to the police: if they were down in south

Armargh where they couldnt get a patrol in, it might take 4 hours to get a helicopter


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come and pick you up to bring them in. The army were given a much, much wider

power of arrest. The powers of arrest for the police were written down in the statutes

of common law, but they brought in a specific one, I remember, for Her Majestys

Forces [which] may arrest any person who they suspect of committing any offence.

And not even reasonably suspect, and not a serious effect: for your dog crapping in

the middle of the street, the military had power of arrest. For no TV license, themilitary had a power of arrest, which we police officers would never ever have had

and wouldnt have used anyway.

The military had each person for four hours before you got them. So one of the things

that we did was have the person medically examined, after we handed them over to

the military. In case he was beaten. And to protect ourselves.

People couldnt walk out of Castlereagh and say Well the police shouted at me so I

told them everything. People had to come out with I was tortured in Castlereagh

and build up the feeling that Castlereagh was a torture chamber. It was not a pleasant

place to go. But it was not a torture chamber. You didnt use electrodes. You usedsleep deprivation, you kept them going for a while, you had no windows so they

didnt know what time of day it was. But we didnt use hoods.

In Castlereagh we made them think it was different. Theyd think they were in for a

good nights sleep, then we got them up, and there were mealtimes at different times.

We would have fed them, we wouldnt have starved them but we would they would

not have known if they were in for two days or four days. We also had quite a few of

them standing against the walls of the interview rooms. I remember once complaining

at one time and them coming up and fingerprinting the walls. You make a person

stand against a wall with his fingertips holding it We certainly medically examined

them.

We lost a police officer called **** [in a bomb blast] and there was a guy that came

in, a leading terrorist who was caught nearby in the follow-up, and he was brought to

Castlereagh. He was medically examined and all intelligence was that he did do it.

When the interview came up he sat in an interview room for seven days and looked in

the corner and didnt speak. And other things, too: on one occasion when a woman

police officer was doing the interrogation he just dropped his trousers and jerked

himself off in front of her. Another one picked his nose and flicked it at us, trying to

put you under different pressures. But most of them were trained just to pick a spot in

the wall and just say nothing. To refuse to speak, refuse to talk. Anyway, this guydidnt speak for 7 days and when he was being released, again [he was] medically

examined to make sure he was not physically ill treated, he said that his ears were

sore, that theyd slapped him in his ears. And what it was: he had perforated

eardrums. He didnt complain about this on the way in but he had been so close to the

explosion, hed blown his own eardrums out and then used that, and kept quiet about

it, thinking about what he was going to do. He was not complaining on the way in.

The doctor couldnt say I didnt examine his ears on the way in. So he said I

examined his ears and I didnt find anything.


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Was it actually helpful to have suspects coming in scared even after the hooding

and so on had been stopped?

Absolutely. Castlereagh frightened the living daylights some people were actually

shaking as they were being arrested. Once they went through it once they saw it

wasnt that bad so it didnt frighten them again. And thats why a lot of people gave itup very quickly. People were really sick of what was going on, but there was the fear:

that menace. You always let the menace be there for new people coming in. You

made them think, if they dont speak Its just round the corner. Its just round the

corner. This torture, this white noise, these methods of cutting off fingers and putting

electrodes onto testicles. Its just round the corner if you dont speak. So you let that

fear be in them.

The police in the United Kingdom are moving to the intelligence model of policing,

because theres very, very few people will give up on an interrogation. [A suspect]

may give it up but he may give it up because the overwhelming physical evidence to

this against him: You were seen here, your blood was on the girl, your fingerprintswere in this and a person may shrug their shoulders and make a statement. But we

find that with a dedicated terrorist they generally did not. They knew that if they made

a statement, when it came to the preliminary enquiry, all the documents served on

them would be handed to the [IRA] officer commanding their wing in the prison (they

had a command structure within the prison). And the officer commanding would be a

leading IRA or UDF man in the prison. There were a couple who were training to be

lawyers while they were in prison. Going through everything.

First of all [the IRA officers] were looking to see what you told them: What did you

give up, why did you surrender this? What statement did you make? Because you

were told in your training camps that you were not to speak and not to sell any

colleagues and that if you went to prison and sold a colleague out, you would die. As

has happened in the prison. They would kill you.

Second they were looking to see if it was an intelligence operation - to see if they

could make some sense of where the intelligence had come from, to see if they could

find out who or what the source was. Was it a technical source, or was it a covert

humint source, or was it just luck on the polices hands?

So youre into Castlereagh, and its first it was very good, very, very successful,

very, very productive. But as people began to realise that they werent being torturedand the 7 days was not that bad - because the doctors were there, because they werent

getting the white noise, because they werent getting the beatings, they werent made

to stand. There was this You did do it, you didnt do it? technique and thats all

you could really say. If you went to question someone now and you say We believe

you were involved in the murder of X at Burnside on 4th of January 2002, you were

seen there - and he says It wasnt me, I wasnt there, somebody made a mistake, I

didnt do it - and you repeat the question, the lawyer says Youve already asked this,

weve answered this question. Move on. Interrogation now has nearly lost its value in

the police sense.


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Because its been so reined-in?

Yeah. PACE and application of lawyers. Lawyers are there for civil rights and people

say Well thats good, thats right. But then you have to move on. If interrogation

isnt going to get a person to give it up, or to tell you whats going on, theres really -they are allowed to use physical force in their interrogation techniques. They can grab

you by the hair and shake your head. Their court allows you a certain amount,

because if they have a, maybe a man who has maybe transported a suicide bomber,

and they havent much time, they talk about the ticking bomb scenario, you have a

bomb that you know is going to go off, or you have an incident that is going to take

place, so interrogation in effect in the western world and this is where the

Americans have stepped back into the Dark Ages, as we did in 1971 and 72 and 73,

interrogating people because we thought it was the only way forward. But its not.

They have to find a different way.

We have tried to tighten up and every time the civil rights people come - yourewatched by the civil rights people so that you dont go into a totalitarian state, go back

to the days where a prisoner has no rights. A prisoner certainly needs to have some

rights. But also you have to deal with the victims rights when youre dealing with a

prisoner.

Were RUC officers surprised by the British Armys approach to interrogation and

prisoner handling in the 1970s?

[The RUC at the time] was a sort of a rural country-type force. When I was young 45

years ago a policeman would have boxed your ears very quickly. Rather than sent you

off home. And that was the way the RUC was in those days. The 56-62 conflict was

badly organised, badly financed and actually not supported by the people, it hadnt a

good propaganda campaign going on. It fizzled out. There werent that many

incidents that were going to cause a big lot of prisoners. Internment was both sides of

the border and therefore it worked much better but Internment in 71 was purely a

Northern Irish thing. It was done with bad intelligence.

What was one of the best recruiting sergeants for the IRA, was actually was to lift

these people from all these families. Because the military came in blind, the police

hadnt got any good intelligence so they went for nearly anybody who was Catholic

who played Gaelic football: They were supporting their land, they must be terrorists.So as well as catching possibly the core or a number of Republican activists, you also

picked up a number of innocent people. And the community knows that very quickly.

We made a number of mistakes in those days by doing blanket searches of houses.

We would have searched a street to find one bombers house: if you were trying to

cover a [clandestine human intelligence] source, do not go straight to number 41!

What you would do it pick four houses in the street, but all with intelligence that

theres Republicans, sympathisers or Republican activity in those houses. So the rest

of the public are not involved. They can say They had it coming, they knew it was


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happening. Youre covering your source by searching maybe three or four sources

but knowing that one is the main house. And as they got more sophisticated, we got

more sophisticated. But in the early times, if youre gonna talk about the inhuman and

humiliating treatment and the European convention of human rights and the court

decisions, Im not saying the courts decisions were wrong. But certainly the

treatment of the prisoners at the early stages of the conflict was not as good as it isnow.

Where did the white noise and the hooding and so on actually come from? How did

they come to Northern Ireland in the first place?

Oh! We didnt know about white noise! We didnt know about this hooding thing! Ill

tell you I remember one guy came in one time and he was crapping himself. You

could see this guy was nervous. But one of the detective sergeants went out and got

Marigold gloves. And had the door open. And they were actually rewiring the place at

the time with this big black armoured cable. And when this boy was being

interviewed, he said You fucking hang on there! Ill go out and get this one. Hepulled the Marigold gloves out of his pockets and slapped them on. He then went out

and grabbed this cable and began shaking, like Christ! Switch it off! Switch it off!

And the boy crapped himself. He actually crapped himself. He thought he was going

to be electrocuted. Now, people can pick up that bit of the technique but actually to

systematically make people stand, to systematically put hoods on them, to

systematically use white noise, I am not so sure. Now whether that was actually

trained into us from the military [I dont know] but I am sure it was that it wasnt

there [before] 71. The techniques of Castelreagh were, I believe, learned from the

military interrogation style that took place.

Theres no doubt that the interrogation techniques in Castlereagh were effective for

a while. Not as much for what actually happened in Castlereagh, - but because of

what the fear of what they thoughtmight happen. But once they got used to being in

Castlereagh, and once the allegations of ill-treatment came out, people jumped up and

down and lawyers got involved and doctors got involved and society got involved.

Then the techniques that may have been used stopped very quickly and I forget the

form 17a?, 3817a?, a special prisoner form, and it had on it a chart with all the marks

a person had when he came in. They were not allowed to be interviewed after a

certain amount of time. The ability to go to ablutions, the ability to make sure they got

the proper meal breaks. So you maybe had a window from 9 till 11 in the morning,

then you went for lunch from 11 till 1, then you went from 1 till 3, and had maybe ashower and went for tea at 5. Then you maybe talked to them from 6 till 8. And thats

where it went. It changed. And all the good results stopped. Stopped. It was not going

to be as successful because people came in and they realised Im going to have a

shower now.

Also they were getting anti-interrogation techniques. They were being trained in all

those matters. And also the biggest incentive for not talking was that you would be

ostracised or murdered when you came out if you said too much. Or you could be

murdered in the prison. There was one in particular where somebody was turned out


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of prison not so long ago, 2002, a Loyalist. And the death that they gave him was

unbelievable. Because he turned and he was going to give evidence against his

colleagues on the outside. And ***** was killed, you know who he is - the man who

was a source for Special Branch during the Finucane murder, and he was the

quartermaster for the UDA. And the gun that was used to kill Finucane was held by

***** and theres things that they tried to prosecute him here for being involved inthe Finucane murder and the prosecution collapsed - as we had told them it would.

But when he came out the UDA decided that he was an informant and killed him two

nights later. All those fears and all those concerns were there when this took place.

Castlereagh was not a place you would want to go to. But then it became a place of

a tiger with no teeth.

Imterrogation became impotent?

Not against a domestic murderer, not against a bar fight where someone gets stabbed.

Not against those things. But where you have either organised crime, or organisedterrorism, then it becomes impotent unless you have some force behind it.

If youre sitting there alone and youve killed someone, then ordinary interrogation

techniques may help. But if you belong to an organisation and you have the ideals of

Al Qaeda in your mind, of the ideals of the UDF, if you think youre doing it from

some higher cause, youre not going to succeed in appealing to their higher nature, the

moral exhortation.

Were you surprised when you saw the pictures of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu

Ghraib?

Are British troops involved? I think they did do a bit of hooding somewhere. The

military are still allowed to hood if theyre taking them through sensitive areas, is that

not right? I thought I heard Blair or Hoon on the radio saying there are circumstances

where they can hood, going though sensitive areas. I could be wrong but I dont think

so - I think thats what they said. Because I couldnt believe that this was taking place.

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Senior RUC Officer on Interrogation