(by Danny Morrison, Irelandclick.com)

This Citadel, this house of hell,
Is worshipped by the law.
It’s built upon a rock of wrong
With hate and bloody straw.

The Crime of Castlereagh
by Bobby Sands

Paul Fox and I were on the dance floor trying to impress the girls when the doors of Clonard Hall burst open and British soldiers began firing rubber bullets. When the screams died down Paul (17) and myself (19) were arrested with 70 other males. By midnight the two of us were in Castlereagh Interrogation Centre in handcuffs, and dying of thirst. That was November 1972. Paul and I were subsequently interned in Long Kesh and after his release in 1975 Paul was killed in an explosion.

Palace Barracks had been shut as an interrogation centre shortly before our arrest because of bad international publicity and because the Irish government had taken Britain to the European Court of Human Rights on charges that Britain had tortured detainees there, following the introduction of internment in August 1971.

So ‘business’ was transferred to Castlereagh Barracks, in loyalist East Belfast. The name Castlereagh is derived from the ‘Cáisleán Riabhach’ or ‘Grey Castle’ of the O’Neill clan in the 13th century which once perched on the Castlereagh Hills. Of course, it was also the title taken by the Tory, Robert Stewart, who as the hated Lord Castlereagh and Chief Secretary to Ireland, ruthlessly crushed the 1798 rebellion, crucially with the help of agents, which was quite apposite, given the later association of Castlereagh Barracks with informers.

The cells and interrogation rooms were separated from the main building by corrugated fencing, topped with razor wire. Access was through a gate with an armed guard, with more armed guards in charge of the cellular block.

I was to spend many other periods at Castlereagh over the years, but I was lucky. Because I had a public profile it was unlikely that I would be beaten as happened to so many other anonymous prisoners, 80 percent of whom signed incriminating statements against themselves (the highest rate of confession ‘evidence’ made in police custody throughout Europe). This ‘evidence’ was then used in the Diplock Courts to fill the H-Blocks where, once again, the prisoners were beaten.

The RUC and the Northern Ireland Office denied that anyone was beaten in Castlereagh and said prisoners were inflicting injuries on themselves as part of the propaganda war against the police. But in March 1979 Dr Robert Irwin, a police surgeon, went on television and said that in the previous three years he had seen over 150 cases in which he was not satisfied that the injuries were self-inflicted.

A story, from official sources, was leaked to the press, aimed at discrediting Irwin. It claimed that Dr Irwin’s wife had been raped in 1976 and that Dr Irwin had harboured a grudge against the RUC for failing to catch the assailant. His wife had been raped at home and at gunpoint by a man with an English accent whilst Dr Irwin was examining a prisoner in police custody. As it turned out, Irwin had nothing but respect for the officers investigating the crime. Nevertheless, for being a whistle-blower he lost many friends.

The Special Branch was a law unto itself and has remained a law unto itself, a force within a force, which is one of the reasons why Sinn Féin refuses to sit on the Police Board and is demanding further changes in line with the Patten Report.

In ‘Beating The Terrorists’ the journalist Peter Taylor interviewed several detectives. One said, “The book on Castlereagh could only be opened slowly, as what was inside was political dynamite.

“He [the detective] told me that several powder kegs were involved and that now was not the time to take the lid off. Some expressed the fear that one day someone would open the book on Castlereagh and they would all be called to account.”

That quote, from 1980, was solely a reference to the secrecy in relation to the beatings that were taking place, and not the ‘dirty war’ of the 1980s and 1990s when Special Branch and British intelligence were colluding with and often directing the loyalist death squads.

That is a scandal of monumental proportions which has only been revealed in part. Were the truth to come out, it would show the involvement of 10 Downing Street in actual terrorism and not just a few loose cannons in MI5 or the Special Branch. Why otherwise does the British government stubbornly refuse to hold a public inquiry into the assassination of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane?

Castlereagh closed as an interrogation centre in 1999 but from within its bowels the intelligence services continue their dirty war. Last week’s seizure of files by unmasked men who knew their way around had to have been carried out by British agents with the objective of destroying some of the records of their terrorist deeds in order to protect individuals or the establishment itself.

Activists who went through Castlereagh were offered huge bribes, the guarantee of immunity from prosecution no matter what actions they had previously carried out and were told they could still kill and bomb to maintain their cover provided they joined the British side. Sympathisers were threatened with blackmail or subject to bribery in attempts to recruit them as informers. Those who refused the emoluments were beaten, or framed, or held out and got out to tell the truth about what went on there - the truth to which the now ‘startled’ media and politicians, in the interest of state terrorism, for years refused to listen to and turned a blind eye.

This article appeared first on the Irelandclick.com web site on March 25, 2002.

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