is hardly surprising that it did. In its investigations the Parker Report revealed that the British army had never considered whether their interrogation techniques were legal under domestic law and had only made the vaguest references to the Geneva Conventions. The regulation of interrogation, such as it existed, had been primarily done for functional and disciplinary ends—to make sure it worked and was controlled. The majority Parker Report thought the techniques were morally justifiable but almost certainly illegal, and therefore the government should take further advice. Gardiner in his minority report argued that the use of the techniques was both immoral and illegal, and that the idea of legalizing the use of such techniques was abhorrent.
Although torture was widely referred to in the protests against the treatment of Republican detainees, it was far from the default term used to describe the techniques. The initial Sunday Times article that broke the story on mainland Britain referred only to “brutality,” setting out the allegations of what it called “psychological pressuring … virtually unrelieved harassment and psychological intimidation” (Barry and Jacobsen 1971, 5). Amnesty International published a report of its own inquiry in early 1972 and did not use the word torture once in the main body of the text, instead referring to “ill-treatment” and “brutal treatment” (1972). One of the first written accounts of the treatment of internees was by Seamas O Tuathail, a Sinn Fein member and journalist, who was rounded up in mid-August 1971.40 He accuses the British army of “brutality and torture.” The same phrase is widely used in other publications.41 “Torture” is used to describe the physical act, but brutality is the multiplier referring to both the cruelty of the perpetrator and the suffering of the victim. “Torture” here does not stand alone as a moral harm. There is also little direct reference to the law or human rights in general. Where O Tuathail makes reference to the ECHR, it is to the right to a fair trial and the prohibition of arbitrary arrest, rather than the prohibition of torture.
The Heath government was privately adamant that the techniques were morally justifiable and initially planned on publicly stating as much.42 However, the government also recognized that, under the current laws in Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, as well as in most other places in the world, the use of the techniques was illegal.43 The law in question was that of assault, and mention was made only in passing of international obligations. After considering the possibility of passing legislation to legalize the techniques or to take a conscious decision to continue acting illegally and then passing a law to indemnify those involved, it was decided to simply state that the techniques would not be used in the foreseeable future. Heath therefore stood up in the House of Commons and declared, “The Government … have decided that the techniques … will not be used in future as an aid to interrogation…. If a Government did decide—on whatever grounds I would not like to foresee—that additional techniques were required for interrogation … they would probably have to come to the House and ask for the powers to do it.”44 There is no moral condemnation of the acts here, merely an indication that because of a change in the circumstances in Northern Ireland, the techniques would not be used again. Crucially, some space was left open for the use of the five techniques to be reintroduced but with the requirement of further parliamentary legislation.
Amnesty International and the International Campaign Against Torture
At least part of the story behind the current role that the prohibition of torture plays in the popular imagination cannot be told without reference to Amnesty International (see Clark 2001; Power 2001). Indeed Amnesty International played a central role in documenting the allegations of ill-treatment in Northern Ireland and increasing the pressure on the Heath government. More broadly, Amnesty International was very significant in putting the prohibition of torture on the international agenda. The organization was founded in the early 1960s to campaign for the release of prisoners of conscience. Torture was not within its original mandate, and was only included in 1966 after much internal debate about the dilution of expertise and resources (Amnesty International 1976).45 The broadening of the mandate to include torture was given added impetus by a 1967 investigation into the treatment of political detainees in Greece, following the coup in April of the same year.46 A two-man team was originally sent to Athens simply to record “who was detained, where they were held, and why they had been arrested” (Amnesty International 1968, 1). However, when the men arrived they found evidence of what seemed to be systematic and deliberate abuse. The report of the trip concluded that torture was “deliberately and officially used”, and was a “widespread practice against Greek citizens suspected of active opposition” (1968, 3).
At the same time, an application had been brought against Greece in the European Commission of Human Rights by the three Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, alleging widespread breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights. Torture was not originally included in the submission but was added after the release of the Amnesty International report. In 1969, the commission found Greece in breach of the European Convention, including Article 3 prohibiting torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Crucially, although it did not impact the findings, the commission drew a distinction between the different parts of Article 3, describing torture as an “aggravated form of inhuman or degrading treatment.”47 For the first time, an intergovernmental organization had suggested that torture was of a higher degree of seriousness than the other forms of ill-treatment with which it had been associated since World War II.
Amnesty International was not the first organization to campaign against the use of torture. However, in the United Kingdom, at least, Amnesty International had the most popular appeal, and its methods of naming and shaming had the most impact on the general public. Important developments were also taking place in Latin America throughout the 1970s, and in many ways Amnesty International drew on this work. The Amnesty International campaign was given added impetus by the presence in Europe and North America of tens of thousands of articulate exiles from Latin America, Chile and Argentina in particular, who could give firsthand accounts of their treatment. Amnesty International’s campaigns worked alongside the lobbying from groups such as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Barcelona-based but Argentina-focused, COSOFAM (Commission of Solidarity with Relatives of the Disappeared) (Robben 2005, 306–10; Sikkink 1993). Literary representations, such as Jacobo Timerman’s account of his abuse in an Argentinean jail, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, also added to the popular consciousness of widespread torture (1981). From the 1970s, Europe and North America were confronted with the systematic torture of people of European descent in a way that seem to remind them of Nazi Germany.
Amnesty International formally launched its Campaign Against Torture in December 1972, initially for one year. Until the early 1970s, Amnesty International employed no lawyers on its full-time staff, and its focus on torture was primarily moral in orientation. The first lawyer appointed on a full-time basis to Amnesty International, Nigel Rodley, would play a central role in the campaign. He would also add a new, stricter focus on international human rights law to Amnesty International’s work. After leaving Amnesty International, he went on to become the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and he sat on the UN Human Rights Committee. It is important to note that although the broadening of Amnesty International’s mandate in the late 1960s referred to all of Article 5 of the UDHR, the campaign left out “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. Always quick to recognize the value of brevity and clarity, Amnesty International singled out torture for specific attention.
Torture was seen by Amnesty International as a singular and universal problem. It could therefore publish a Report on Torture between 1973 and 1975 and again in 1984, setting out the practice of torture from Albania to Zambia, via Chile, India, Israel, Morocco, Togo, Vietnam, and many others besides. Torture was the same thing wherever it took place and could be understood in the same terms. For Amnesty International, by 1973 “what for the last two or three hundred years has been no more than an historical curiosity, has suddenly developed a life of its own and become a social cancer” (1973, 7). Amnesty International sought to define torture as the “systematic and deliberate infliction of acute pain in any form by one person on another, or
