Everything about Five Techniques totally explained
The term
five techniques refers to certain interrogation practices adopted by the
Northern Ireland and
British governments during
Operation Demetrius in the early 1970s. These methods were adopted by the
Royal Ulster Constabulary with training and advice regarding their use coming from senior intelligence officials in the
United Kingdom Government.
The five techniques were:
wall-standing; hooding; subjection to noise; deprivation of sleep; deprivation of food and drink. In 1978, the
European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) trial "
Ireland v. the
United Kingdom" ruled that the five techniques "did not occasion suffering of the particular intensity and cruelty implied by the word torture ... [but] amounted to a practice of inhuman and degrading treatment", in breach of the
European Convention on Human Rights.
Parker Report
In response to the public and Parliamentary disquiet on
16 November 1971, the 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 use of the five techniques.
The "Parker Report" was published on
March 2 1972 and had 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 (
March 2 1972), the 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 ... won't be used in future as an aid to interrogation... The statement that I've made covers all future circumstances. |
As foreshadowed in the Prime Minister's statement, directives expressly prohibiting the use of the techniques, whether singly or in combination, were then issued to the security forces by the Government}}
European Court of Human Rights trial Ireland v. the United Kingdom
The Commission's 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 [[EuropeanCommission of Human Rights |
These were referred to by the court as the
five techniques. 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 didn't 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] [[European Convention on Human Rights#Article 3 - prohibition_of_torture |
On
8 February 1977, in proceedings before the ECHR, and in line with the findings of the Parker report and United Kingdom Government policy, the Attorney-General of the United Kingdom stated that
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' won't in any circumstances be reintroduced as an aid to interrogation. |
Further Information
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