The minibus picks us up at the top of Whiterock Road and we drive down to the Falls. At the Sinn Fein centre, mothers sit with their children on their knees and young men stand around smoking. A sign on the wall reminds parents to put forward their kids’ names for the Christmas panto. Beside it is a framed portrait of Bobby Sands. The portrait is from prisoners in Long Kesh with an inscription thanking the POW department for their minibus service down through the years.

I am on my way to Long Kesh to talk to two of the remaining three defendants originally known as The Ballymurphy Seven. Mickey Beck, Hughie McLoughlin and Tony Garland are spending their fourth year inside, making them the longest ever remand prisoners in Northern Ireland. Mickey and Tony were both seventeen when arrested, Hughie was eighteen. They are charged with attempted murder and participation in a “coffee-jar bomb” attack on a joint British Army-RUC patrol, in August 1991.

Already, charges have been dropped against four of the seven. In April, Justice Carr acquitted Ciaran McAllister on the basis of his “mental state”. After serving two years on remand, the Judge had this to say to him: “I hope that you can put the past behind you and that you profit from this experience.” Whatever profit the judge had in mind it certainly wasn’t financial because Ciaran will not receive a penny for the time he spent on remand in Crumlin Road prison. Brendan McCrory was similarly acquitted, on the basis that he was unable to make a confession because of his “mental state”.

In September of this year, charges were dropped against a further two of the seven, Danny Pettigrew and Stephen McMullan. Justice Kerr, in acquitting them, stressed that even though he found the confessions inadmissible, this in no way impugned the actions of the questioning officers and he rejected any allegations of ill-treatment.

Which is curious. There was never any real evidence to link the seven with the attack to begin with. The police had no forensics and no witnesses. At a bail hearing, the Crown prosecution claimed there was forensic evidence – a hat and a scarf found close to the scene of the bomb attack – but this evidence has since gone missing from RUC vaults. The only evidence that exists are signed confessions that were made after the boys had been interrogated for up to six days in Castlereagh Holding Centre.

SUPER PROVIE

Outside, the sign reads H.M.P. Maze. In the carpark, in a prefabricated building, the Quakers provide a crèche service and a cheap cafe for visiting relatives. We enter the prison. We wait, we get searched, we wait. We are then herded into a van and counted. The van travels slowly about a hundred yards over a ramp and through a large metal gate. The gate is closed and a head looks into the van and counts us again.

We can’t see out because the glass in the windows is thick and frosted. We move on about two hundred yards and the van stops. After a minute or two the door opens and we are shepherded through a revolving steel gate, through an enclosed compound and into a prefabricated cabin. We wait again before a uniform appears at the door and calls out the list of prisoners who are waiting for their visits. Through some more gates and we are buzzed into the visitors room.

Mickey Beck is in reasonably good spirits. The regime in the Kesh is easier than in Crumlin Road, where he has spent most of his incarceration. Crumlin Road is a dilapidated Victorian building riddled with cockroaches. Loyalist and republican prisoners are not kept in separate wings. He recalls how he was sharing a cell there with Danny Pettigrew during the recent Loyalist riots. They were both terrified, with loyalists on the rampage and cracks appearing on the ceiling and walls of their cell. Danny was praying to God and the Virgin Mary shouting out. “We’re going to die, we’re going to die!”.

Although it was far from funny, looking back on it now , Mickey has a laugh. He’s optimistic about his chances particularly in light of a recent European Rights Commission ruling, in the case of John Murray, which found that a man denied access to a solicitor while under interrogation in Belfast was unfairly tried and convicted. However, he’s also not expecting any miracles. He has absolutely no faith in British Justice and for him the court proceedings are a joke. (Since then the Judge has rejected the implications of the Murray Judgement to this case.)

“I’m just reading that Gerry Conlon book now and the bit about the court is just the same for us. We just sit there playing hangman and X’s and O’s. It makes no difference,” he says.

Hughie McLoughlin, meanwhile, is less optimistic. He thinks that it would be too embarrassing for the British Government to release them all. As far as the prosecution case was concerned, Brendan McCrory and Stephen McMullan, who have been released, were supposed to be the actual people who threw the bomb. The rest were described as look-outs. If the charges against McCrory and McMullan were dismissed, then it is hard to see the logic of not similarly dismissing the charges against the remaining three. Hughie thinks that they have to stitch someone up with it and he will be one of the scapegoats. He is already preparing himself for the appeal to Europe.

There were originally forty-one charges against Hughie. All of these have since been dismissed, apart from the one of attempted murder for the “coffee-jar bomb” incident. His friends used to jokingly call him super Provie. His charge sheet makes interesting reading. One charge reads as follows: “That you on consecutive dates unknown between the first day of January 1991 and the seventh day of August 1991 on a date unknown had in your possession firearms with intent to endanger life.”

That such a conspiracy charge can be levelled without a shred of evidence seems unjust enough but this feeling is compounded by the fact that by the sixth of August Hughie had already been arrested. If Hughie had in his possession firearms on the sixth of August, while being interrogated by the RUC in Castlereagh then, indeed, he could be nothing less than a super Provie!

He was also charged with kneecappings, which he had allegedly carried out at the age of sixteen. In relation to these charges, Patrick Marks and John Smyth took the stand and told the court that the men who kneecapped them, although they wore balaclavas, were much older and much bigger than Hughie. Witnesses such as these demonstrated the serious inconsistencies in his alleged confessions.

Hughie says that while in Castlereagh, the RUC offered him thousands of pounds to become an informer. He refused. He says they made threats about getting his family and that this is what in the end made him sign the confession. He had been interrogated for six days.

Mickey Beck was interrogated for four days. When I ask him about his experience in Castlereagh, his face clouds over. He describes being hit, the continual shouting in his ears, the slaps across the back of the head. The worst thing though was the psychological torture. He takes a breath: “The thing was, you go into Castlereagh and you expect the worst. Even the name Castlereagh. Fucking hell. You shit yourself. You hear all the stories and you keep expecting them to grab you by the balls. One of them puts his hand on your leg (points to his inner thigh) and you think no, fuck!”

The boys’ families believe they only know half of what happened in Castlereagh. They believe the boys were too humiliated and traumatised to be able to tell them the full story. Many of the mothers were shocked when they were first allowed to see their sons. Mickey’s mother, Mary, remembers seeing her son and asking him why did he sign the confession and he said “Mammy I would have signed anything to get out of that place.”

Hughie’s mother Liz was shocked when she first saw him after the six days: “He was sitting in a corner in a chair. Underneath his eyes were all purple. His eyes were all bloodshot. He looked like a fellow you’d see in a film, brainwashed, completely out of it. I was crying me eyes out. He was crying his eyes out. He said ‘Mummy I didn’t do anything.’ I said ‘ I know you didn’t do anything. They had a charge sheet. Five charges on it. Attempted murder and hijacking.”

TERRORIST ACTIVITY

All of the Ballymurphy Seven experienced varying degrees of physical and psychological torture while under interrogation in Castlereagh. Tony Garland lost one and a half stone in weight. He was also refused an inhaler for his asthma. Stephen McMullan had urine thrown in his eyes and now requires glasses.

Allegations of torture in Castlereagh are nothing new. In a special report on “Children in Northern Ireland”, Helsinki Watch, a division of Human Rights Watch, found that “children under eighteen have been physically and mentally abused in Castlereagh Holding Centre”, and that “children have been psychologically tricked and pressured by police during interrogation”.

Amnesty International has similarly expressed concern about the ill-treatment of detainees and in particular about the Seven’s allegations that they were brutalised, while in custody, by RUC officers and as a result were induced to sign statements in the absence of their lawyers.

Although there have been numerous allegations of torture in Castlereagh, there have been no charges brought against police officers. According to Martin O’ Brien of the Committee for the Administration of Justice (CAJ) a large number of people have been compensated because of ill-treatment in Castlereagh yet in the last six years not one police officer has even been disciplined because of this. In his report on Castlereagh, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper recommended the use of audio-visual equipment for interviews. This was rejected by both Secretary of State Sir Patrick Mayhew and the RUC Chief Constable Sir Hugh Annesley. The CAJ finds it hard to see why the police and authorities would reject the introduction of audio-visual.

“Such a system would safeguard the police and the detainees” said Mr O’Brien.

According to Catriona Ruane of the Centre for Research and Documentation (CRD), confessions are the starting point for abuse of the system.

She points out that, with seven days to interrogate someone under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which is itself a violation of International Law, the police can easily get a confession. “From the start, detainees are isolated, disorientated and confined in conditions which are inhuman and degrading.”

The families themselves find it ludicrous that “confessions” acquired in such circumstances should be considered as evidence. Mary Beck, mother of Mickey, points out one linguistic anomaly in the statement of her son. In his statement Mickey is quoted as saying: “I knew that there was terrorist activity going on.”

“They don’t talk like that around here,” says Mary. “Terrorist activity? They don’t call them (the IRA) terrorists. They call them chuckies, or hurry-ups, or Bon Jovies. Every area has their own name for them.”

ONGOING TRIAL

The parents of the Ballymurphy Seven are not alone in their scepticism. Human rights groups have continually expressed concern about the reliability of this confessional evidence. There has also been international concern about other aspects of this case, in particular the ages of the youths when arrested and the length of time they have spent on remand.

Catriona Ruane of the CRD draws attention to the fact that both Danny Pettigrew and Ciaran McAllister were both sixteen when the ‘coffee-jar bomb’ attack took place. They were not arrested until April 1992, eight months later. Ciaran was arrested four days after his seventeenth birthday.

“If you’re under seventeen then you’re not an adult and the law requires that an ‘appropriate adult’, such as a parent or a guardian, be present during interrogation. It’s a totally different dynamic. But wait until you’re seventeen, then they can get you for life. If they had enough evidence and they thought they were guilty, why did they not arrest them when they were sixteen?”

Many people in Ballymurphy saw the arrests as part of an unofficial policy of Youth Internment that began in August of 1991 when the Seven were arrested. In the summer of 1990 Sinn Fein called a Youth Conference, open to all between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. The idea was to ask young people what they thought about the direction the Republican Movement was taking. The RUC later issued a statement saying that the IRA had recruited two hundred youths. Since that statement, according to locals in the area, any time there was an IRA incident, young people were arrested.

It was around this time that the “Voice of The Innocent” group was set up. It comprised mainly family members of those arrested at first, but has since mushroomed with committees in Scotland, Canada and in half a dozen U.S. cities. It now also liaises with other human rights groups. For over three years the group have campaigned tirelessly for the release of the Seven.

Liz McLoughlin, mother of Hughie, now finds it difficult to even go to the court hearings: “ These days it’s just too much. These days I can’t go. My husband has to go to the court. The lies they come up with. And you have to sit there and just listen. You want to get up and start shouting. But if you do that they’ll put you out of the court right away. You’re looking at the boys standing there and your heart is breaking because you know they’re innocent and the judge is taking the side of the RUC and the British army and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“The way it is, your whole life surrounds the jail. You make sure you have their parcel. You make sure you have the clothes washed and ironed and dried. It affects the other kids in your house. The other kids feel kind of neglected. The kids keep asking you when they’re coming home. They can’t understand why four are out and there’s three kept in.”

In the last three years the families have tried everything to mobilise support. It has been a long haul. They’re critical of many southern politicians, whom they feel have ignored the case, as well as of the Catholic Hierarchy. Letters have been sent to all members of the Dail. Both Dick Spring and Albert Reynolds said they would bring the matter up through the framework of the Anglo-Irish Conference. and have promised that they “will continue to monitor proceedings closely in the ongoing trial”.

TORTURE CHAMBERS

The families feel that they’re banging their heads against a brick wall talking to them. If they’ve sent one letter they’ve sent a thousand. But some TDs, like Tony Gregory and Eamonn O’Cuiv, have been very supportive. Most of the real pressure, however, has come from the USA. According to Kevin Nolan, chairperson of the “Voice of the Innocent” committee, the highlight of the campaign was when a delegation of eighteen American lawyers came over to monitor the trial. Human rights groups have also been involved: “We said no matter what he (the Judge) says, it will be recorded by Human Rights groups and sent around the world. The man himself can’t be seen to be getting away with anything.”

Kevin Nolan is angry at the system which put these innocent boys behind bars.

“Justice delayed is Justice denied,” he says. “No matter what you say, at the end of the day Human Rights are God-given: no cunt sitting in a diplock court telling me my rights or some fucker pulling up in a jeep telling me my rights. People forget that these kids are the longest remand ever in the North of Ireland in the last twenty-five years. Given that they’ve no forensics, no witnesses and no evidence, the whole thing is rotten.”

“You see that most of these Judges, most of the people who run these interrogation centres – though they shouldn’t be called interrogation centres they should be called torture chambers – what they forget is that people’s not going to take any more, people’s going to stand up and fight. Especially mothers. When mothers fight for their offspring they’ll fight harder.”

Voice of the Innocent have pledged to go on fighting. If the boys even get sentenced to two days, they’re taking it to the European Court. As it is, they have already served the equivalent of a seven-year sentence, without even being convicted. Support is now coming in from all quarters. Gone are the days when they had to occupy the offices of Andersonstown News to get them to cover the story.

Even if the boys are released, they’ll go on fighting. Since the committee formed they have been made aware of many other miscarriages of justice in Northern Ireland so the campaign will go on until “The interrogation centres are torn down and the whole Judicial system in the North is closed down.”

As Hughie McLoughlin’s mother Liz put it: “ I wouldn’t like any other mother to go through what I’ve been through. And if my son was released in the morning I would still go on campaigning for anybody else that’s innocent.”