Operation Demetrius

Operation Demetrius
Part of The Troubles and Operation Banner
The entrance to Compound 19, one of the sections of Long Kesh internment camp
Location	Northern Ireland
Objective	Arrest of suspected Irish republican paramilitaries
Date	9–10 August 1971 04:00 – ? (UTC+01:00)
Executed by	British Army Royal Ulster Constabulary
Outcome	342 people arrested and interned 7,000 civilians displaced
Casualties	(see below)

Operation Demetrius was a British Army operation in Northern Ireland on 9–10 August 1971, during The Troubles. It involved the mass arrest and internment (without trial) of 342 people suspected of being involved with Irish republican paramilitaries (the Provisional IRA and Official IRA). Armed soldiers launched dawn raids throughout Northern Ireland, sparking four days of rioting that killed 20 civilians, two IRA members and two British soldiers. About 7,000 people fled their homes, of which roughly 2,500 fled south of the border. The policy of internment was to last until December 1975. Its introduction, and the brutal treatment of those interned, led to numerous protests and a sharp increase in violence.

Planning

Internment was re-introduced on the orders of the then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Brian Faulkner. The policy of internment had been used a number of times during Northern Ireland's (and the Republic of Ireland's) history.

In the case brought to the European Commission of Human Rights by the Irish Government against the British state it was conceded that Operation Demetrius was planned and implemented from the highest levels of the British Government and that specially trained personnel were sent to Northern Ireland to familiarize the local forces in what became known as the 'five techniques' (interrogation techniques that some claim amounted to torture).

On the initial list of those to be arrested, which was drawn up by RUC Special Branch and MI5, there were 450 names, but only 350 of these rendered themselves available for internment. Key figures on the lists, and many who never appeared on them, were warned before the swoop began. It included leaders of the non-violent civil rights movement such as Ivan Barr and Michael Farrell. But, as Tim Pat Coogan noted,

What they did not include was a single Loyalist. Although the UVF had begun the killing and bombing, this organisation was left untouched, as were other violent Loyalist satellite organisations such as Tara, the Shankill Defence Association and the Ulster Protestant Volunteers. It is known that Faulkner was urged by the British to include a few Protestants in the trawl but he refused.

The operation and its immediate aftermath

The HMS Maidstone, a prison ship docked at Belfast where many internees were sent

Operation Demetrius began on Monday 9 August at about 4AM.

The operation was in two parts:

• (1) Arrest and movement of the detainees to one of three regional holding centers: Girdwood in Belfast, Ballykinler in County Down, or Magilligan in County Londonderry.
• (2) The process of identification and questioning, leading either to release of the detainee or movement into detention at Crumlin Road prison or aboard the HMS Maidstone, a prison ship in Belfast Harbor.

In the first wave of raids across Northern Ireland, 342 people were arrested. Many of those arrested reported that they and their families were assaulted, verbally abused and threatened by the soldiers. There were claims of soldiers smashing their way into houses without warning and firing rubber bullets through doors and windows. Many of those arrested also reported being ill-treated during their detention. They complained of being beaten, verbally abused, threatened, harassed by dogs, denied sleep, and starved. Specific humiliations included being forced to run a gauntlet of baton-wielding soldiers, having their heads forcefully shaved, being kept naked, being burnt with cigarettes, having a sack placed over their heads for long periods, having a rope kept around their necks, having the barrel of a gun pressed against their heads, being dragged by the hair, being trailed behind armored vehicles while barefoot, and being tied to armored trucks as a human shield.

The operation sparked an immediate upsurge of violence, which was said to be the worst since the August 1969 riots. The British Army came under sustained attack from Irish nationalist/republican rioters and gunmen. People blocked roads and streets with burning barricades to stop the British Army entering their neighborhoods. In Derry, barricades were again erected around Free Derry and "for the next 11 months these areas effectively seceded from British control". On the 9th, 10th and 11th of August, 24 people were killed or fatally wounded. The dead included:

• 20 civilians (14 Irish Catholics, 6 Protestants)
• 2 members of the Provisional IRA, shot dead by the British Army
• 2 members of the British Army, shot dead by the Provisional IRA

A mural commemorating those killed in the Ballymurphy Massacre during Operation Demetrius

Of the civilians killed, 17 were killed by the British Army and the other three were killed by unknown attackers. In West Belfast's Ballymurphy housing estate, 11 Irish Catholic civilians were killed by the British Army between 9 and 11 August in an episode that has become known as the Ballymurphy Massacre. Another flashpoint was Ardoyne in North Belfast, where soldiers shot dead three people on 9 August. Many Protestant families fled Ardoyne and about 200 burnt their homes as they left, lest they "fall into Catholic hands". Catholic homes were burnt in Ardoyne and elsewhere also. About 7000 people, most of them Catholic, were left homeless. About 2500 Catholic refugees fled south of the border, where new refugee camps were set up.

By 13 August, media reports indicated that the violence had begun to wane, seemingly due to exhaustion on the part of the IRA and security forces.

On 15 August, the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) announced that it was starting a campaign of civil disobedience in response to the introduction of internment. By 17 October, it was estimated that about 16,000 households were withholding rent and rates for council houses as part of the campaign of civil disobedience.

On 16 August, over 8000 workers went on strike in Derry in protest at internment. Joe Cahill, then Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA, held a press conference during which he claimed that only 30 Provisional IRA members had been interned.

On 22 August, in protest against internment, about 130 non-Unionist councillors announced that they would no longer sit on district councils. The SDLP also withdrew its representatives from a number of public bodies. On 19 October, five Northern Ireland Members of Parliament (MPs) began a 48-hour hunger strike against internment. The protest took place near 10 Downing Street in London. Among those taking part were John Hume, Austin Currie, and Bernadette Devlin. Protests would continue until internment was ended in December 1975.

Long-term effects

Anti-internment mural in the Bogside area of Derry

The backlash against internment contributed to the decision of the British Government under Prime Minister Edward Heath to suspend the Northern Ireland Government and replace it with direct rule from Westminster, under the authority of a British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Following the resignation of the Government of Northern Ireland and the prorogation of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1972, internment was continued by the direct rule administration until 5 December 1975. During this period a total of 1,981 people were interned: 1,874 were Irish nationalists, while 107 were Ulster loyalists.

Historians generally view the period of internment as inflaming sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland, while failing in its goal of arresting key members of the IRA. Many of the nationalists arrested were completely unconnected with the organization, but their names appeared on the list of those to be arrested through bungling and incompetence. The list's lack of reliability and the arrests that followed, complemented by reports of internees being abused, led to more people identifying with the IRA in the nationalist community and losing hope in other methods. After Operation Demetrius, recruits came forward in huge numbers to join the Provisional and Official wings of the IRA. Internment also led to a sharp incease in violence. In the eight months before the operation, there were 34 conflict-related deaths in Northern Ireland. In the four months following it, 140 were killed. A serving officer of the British Royal Marines declared:

It (internment) has, in fact, increased terrorist activity, perhaps boosted IRA recruitment, polarised further the Catholic and Protestant communities and reduced the ranks of the much needed Catholic moderates.

In terms of loss of life, 1972 was the most violent of the entire Troubles. The fatal march on Bloody Sunday (30 January 1972) in Derry, when 14 unarmed civil rights protestors were shot dead by British paratroopers, was an anti-internment march.

Effects on domestic and international law

Parker Report

When the interrogation techniques used in Northern Ireland became known to the public, it caused great outrage towards the Government, especially from the Irish nationalist community. In response to the public and Parliamentary disquiet, on 16 November 1971 (just over a month after the start of Operation Demetrius), the British Government commissioned a committee of inquiry chaired by Lord Parker (the Lord Chief Justice of England) to look into the legal and moral aspects of the 'five techniques'.

The "Parker Report" was published on 2 March 1972 and found the five techniques to be illegal under domestic law:

10. Domestic Law ...(c) We have received both written and oral representations from many legal bodies and individual lawyers from both England and Northern Ireland. There has been no dissent from the view that the procedures are illegal alike by the law of England and the law of Northern Ireland. ... (d) This being so, no Army Directive and no Minister could lawfully or validly have authorized the use of the procedures. Only Parliament can alter the law. The procedures were and are illegal.

On the same day (2 March 1972), United Kingdom Prime Minister Edward Heath stated in the House of Commons:

[The] Government, having reviewed the whole matter with great care and with reference to any future operations, have decided that the techniques ... will not be used in future as an aid to interrogation... The statement that I have made covers all future circumstances.

As foreshadowed in the Prime Minister's statement, directives expressly forbidding the use of the techniques, whether singly or in combination, were then issued to the security forces by the Government. These are still in force and the use of such methods by UK security forces would not be condoned by the Government.

European Commission of Human Rights

The Irish Government, on behalf of the men who had been subject to the five techniques, took a case to the European Commission on Human Rights (Ireland v. United Kingdom, 1976 Y.B. Eur. Conv. on Hum. Rts. 512, 748, 788-94 (Eur. Comm’n of Hum. Rts.)). The Commission stated that it

...unanimously considered the combined use of the five methods to amount to torture, on the grounds that (1) the intensity of the stress caused by techniques creating sensory deprivation "directly affects the personality physically and mentally"; and (2) "the systematic application of the techniques for the purpose of inducing a person to give information shows a clear resemblance to those methods of systematic torture which have been known over the ages...a modern system of torture falling into the same category as those systems applied in previous times as a means of obtaining information and confessions.

European Court of Human Rights

The Commissions findings were appealed. In 1978 in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) trial Ireland v. the United Kingdom (Case No. 5310/71), the facts were not in dispute and the judges court published the following in their judgement:

These methods, sometimes termed "disorientation" or "sensory deprivation" techniques, were not used in any cases other than the fourteen so indicated above. It emerges from the Commission's establishment of the facts that the techniques consisted of:

• (a) wall-standing: forcing the detainees to remain for periods of some hours in a "stress position", described by those who underwent it as being "spreadeagled against the wall, with their fingers put high above the head against the wall, the legs spread apart and the feet back, causing them to stand on their toes with the weight of the body mainly on the fingers";
• (b) hooding: putting a black or navy coloured bag over the detainees' heads and, at least initially, keeping it there all the time except during interrogation;
• (c) subjection to noise: pending their interrogations, holding the detainees in a room where there was a continuous loud and hissing noise;
• (d) deprivation of sleep: pending their interrogations, depriving the detainees of sleep;
• (e) deprivation of food and drink: subjecting the detainees to a reduced diet during their stay at the centre and pending interrogations.

These (a to e) were the 'five techniques' referred to above. The court ruled:

167. ... Although the five techniques, as applied in combination, undoubtedly amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment, although their object was the extraction of confessions, the naming of others and/or information and although they were used systematically, they did not occasion suffering of the particular intensity and cruelty implied by the word torture as so understood. ... 168. The Court concludes that recourse to the five techniques amounted to a practice of inhuman and degrading treatment, which practice was in breach of [the European Convention on Human Rights] Article 3 (art. 3).

On 8 February 1977, in proceedings before the ECHR, and in line with the findings of the Parker Report and UK Government policy, the Attorney-General of the United Kingdom stated:

The Government of the United Kingdom have considered the question of the use of the 'five techniques' with very great care and with particular regard to Article 3 (art. 3) of the Convention. They now give this unqualified undertaking, that the 'five techniques' will not in any circumstances be reintroduced as an aid to interrogation.