After a week of enduring horrific experiments as a human guinea pig for the British Army, Kevin Hannaway's own family didn't recognise him.
"I was returned to Crumlin Road jail. My injuries were so bad that my two brothers who were interned there didn't know me," he says. "When I saw the other 'guinea pigs', I was horrified – I didn't realise I looked the same.
"My nose was busted. I was bruised and bleeding. My teeth were coming through my lips. For a year, I passed blood every time I went to the toilet. The mental pain was the worst. Even now, I wake up in a sweat during the night, remembering what happened. They took me to hell and back."
Hannaway, from a veteran republican family, is Gerry Adams's cousin. He was a 22-year-old joiner from the Falls, when he was one of 342 people arrested and interned in the North on 9 August 1971.
A dozen of them were selected by the army and taken to a secret location in the North where sensory deprivation experiments – originally developed by the KGB – were carried out on them.
As the 40th anniversary of their torture approaches next week, the surviving hooded men have met up for the first time. The Sunday World has been given exclusive pictures of their emotional re-union. It took place at a small republican museum in Lurgan run by local man Jim McIlmurray.
The 'guinea pigs' are demanding that the soldiers and police who tortured them be brought to justice. "They must be named and shamed. They've been allowed to hide in the shadows too long," says Jim Auld, another victim.
"No-one has apologised and no-one has been prosecuted. We blame the military bosses who gave the orders more than the soldiers who carried them out. They're either now in top army positions or retired on huge pensions while we struggle with the physical and mental scars."
Despite his family link to Gerry Adams, Hannaway says: "The peace process hasn't delivered justice for us. Sinn Féin is on the wrong path working with the same British system which did this to us. No attempt has been made to hold our torturers to account."
Hannaway's memories remain vivid: "We were made to stand in a search position against a wall for days. Every time you moved a limb or fell down through pain or exhaustion, you were beaten until you got up again.
"White noise (a high-pitched hissing sound) was played in the background to try to drive us out of our minds. They deprived us of sleep, food and water for a week." But the helicopter drops and being forced to run the gauntlet were the worst, he says: "I was trussed up like a chicken – handcuffed and then my feet tied to my hands.
"I was dragged through lines of police who batoned me. Then, I was thrown into a helicopter. I was kicked out of the helicopter from 20feet. I thought I was going to die."
Unlike Hannaway, Jim Auld (19) from the Falls wasn't a republican: "I was coming home from a party when I was arrested. I was an apprentice dental technician. I was just interested in work and enjoying myself."
After their arrest, both men were taken to Girwood Barracks where they were stripped, clad in over-sized boiler suits, handcuffed and hooded. Number '8' was stamped in blue ink on Auld's hand; number '5' on Hannaway's.
They were then flown by helicopter to a destination which, even now, the authorities won't reveal. Sources believe it was either Palace Barracks in Holywood, Co Down, or Ballykelly Army camp in Co Derry.
After the helicopter landed, they were thrown in a lorry and driven to a barn-like building where they were ordered to stand in the search position against a wall.
"I collapsed unconscious countless times," says Auld. "As I lay on the floor, they jumped on my feet so much my toenails fell off. I was denied sleep for six days. I wasn't taken to the toilet. I had to urinate and excrete in the boiler suit."
The white noise, barely noticeable at first, eventually began to drive him insane: "It was like being in a box with a TV on at full volume. I became a zombie. I couldn't remember who or where I was."
The only time he was taken out of the room was to be interrogated: "They asked me where guns and explosives were. I didn't tell them because I didn't know. They beat me and then took me back to the wall in the room with the noise.
"I started hallucinating. I was trembling all over. I wasn't even like an animal, I was a lump of nothing. I thought they were going to kill me so I threw myself head first at a central heating pipe on the ground, hoping to break my neck. But they picked me up and beat me again.
"It seems like yesterday. I can still hear the noise, feel the hood and smell my own sweat in the boiler suit. It's become part of me."
Paddy Joe McClean, a civil rights' leader and teacher from Beragh, Co Tyrone, was another 'guinea pig'. When he collapsed from the search position, they hung him from the wall on coat hooks. His wrists still bear the scars.
"The noise was the worst," he says. "My brain was ready to burst. I thought they'd kill me. I wished to God they'd just end it all. My mind began to drift. I thought I'd died and I saw my own funeral. I wasn't in the IRA but it didn't matter to them whether you were innocent or guilty."
Mickey Donnelly (22), a Derry brick-layer, was also tortured: "The hood was pulled around my head so tightly I thought I'd suffocate. Every day, they'd lift it just above my mouth and shove in a slice of hard dry bread and half a cup of water. I could hear the groans and screams of other men so I knew I wasn't alone."
After his release, Donnelly was offered psychiatric treatment. Some hooded men accepted but he refused: "For me, it would have been accepting that the Brits had got the better of me. I dealt with the after-effects my own way."
He claims the hooded men have been abandoned: "An inquiry into what happened should have been on Sinn Féin's agenda. The fact the perpetrators escaped justice for what they did to us opened up the way for Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay."
He wants prosecutions: "Why should republicans like Marian Price, Brendan Lillis and Martin Corey have their licences revoked for historical crimes while the cops and soldiers who tortured us aren't in the dock?"
Francis McGuigan, then a 23-year-old Ardoyne joiner, is another hooded man demanding justice: "I was so badly beaten that my body eventually went numb. I remember laughing at the exertions of those still beating me when I was beyond pain.
"These weren't rogue police and soldiers who lost the run of themselves. They'd been trained to do what they did. It was systematic.
"I was left on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I received psychiatric treatment. At one session, I punched a doctor and made a run for it. I thought he was a soldier. I still suffer trauma. I get chest pains and all the signs of a heart attack when there's nothing wrong with me."
Three hooded men – Pat Shivers, Mickey Montgomery, and Sean McKenna – suffered premature deaths linked to their torture. Many of the survivors were close to tears at their re-union last week.
"I hadn't seen some of the lads for 40 years," says Kevin Hannaway. "We've all different political viewpoints but the bond between us is unbreakable. We are united in what we suffered and in seeking justice. We will be comrades until the day we die."
