British Army Torture Not Torturey Enough To Be Considered Torture, Court Rules

THE EUROPEAN COURT of Human Rights (ECHR) has rejected the assertion that the 14 men, known otherwise as the ‘Hooded Men’ were subjected to a series of torture methods by the British Army in Northern Ireland, stating that the apparent torture ‘wasn’t torturey enough’.

Being placed in stress positions, subjected to white noise, sleep deprivation and deprivation of food and water, along with beatings and death threats, and the placing of hoods over their heads has been found to lack the proper criteria of ‘proper torture’.

Despite official British and Irish declassified documents detailing a history of British governments refusal to outlaw Northern Ireland’s largest loyalist gang during the Troubles, while engaging in mass sectarian screening and internment which almost exclusively targeted the nationalist communities, the idea that the British Army would torture men proved too far fetched for the ECHR.

“The British government aided and abetted loyalist paramilitaries… but you don’t think… good God, you don’t think they’d have it in them to let their army act with impunity and torture innocent people, do you?” queried one legal expert who sided with the ECHR on their decision to deny the so-called ‘Hooded Men’ any justice, but was now beginning to have his doubts.

14 Catholic men in Northern Ireland, otherwise known under British law as British citizens, were detained without charge in 1971 as part of a policy of internment and tortured by the British Army whose job, among other things, was to protect British citizens.

The original 1978 ruling by the ECHR, appealed by the Irish government, states that the British government simply treated these people inhumanely, but didn’t go as far as torture, which will be of huge relief to the group of men once they are told the news while also making them feel slightly silly for spending over 40 years searching for justice.

“Dangling men with hoods over their heads out of a helicopter and telling them they are about to be thrown to their deaths from high in the air, only to drop a few feet down to the ground. I mean that’s bad, but is that torture? Oh wait, it is? Shit, I think we might have fucked this one up, we thought it was just bit of banter,” remarked one judge who ruled on the case.