ULSTER SAYS MAYBE ! MARTY SAYS ZEIG HEIL

Loyalists to join Sin Fein

Loyalist bandsmen will participate in a Sin Fein Ard Fheis with the Loyalist Londonderry Band's Forum to make a presentation at the annual conference, in what McGuinness calls Londonderry, but which Irish Republicans call Doire, this weekend.

Loyalist Derek Moore, who is the co-ordinator, said, "We are taking the opportunity to speak for ourselves and to raise issues that are important to bands."
The two-day Ard Fheis is being held in the Millennium Forum in Derry.

It is just the second time Sin Fein's annual conference has been held in British Occupied Ireland. In 2011, Rev David Latimer, a former British army chaplain from Derry, who served with the British Army in Afghanistan, was the principal speaker, when the Ard Fheis was in Belfast's Waterfront Hall.

The Loyalist bandsmen will address the issue of educational under achievement, among young working-class Protestants. Derek Moore said, "We will be speaking about the educational under-achievements of young protestants. Only 20% of them are leaving school with enough qualifications to get an interview. It is a big issue."

Martin McGuinness welcomed the loyalist contribution, stating "I warmly welcome the fact that the Loyalist Londonderry Bands Forum will this weekend make a presentation to the Sin Fein Ard Fheis in the city. I think that leadership has been shown in the city of Derry, and is something that could be followed everywhere."


POW STATEMENT FROM ROE HOUSE 02.03.15


Director General's attempts to silence and cover-up Exposed

Sue McAllister's latest letter in The Irish News (25-02-15) with its usual plethora of 'safety and security' rhetoric is laced with deliberate inaccuracies and downright lies. In relation to Republican prisoners being assaulted in Roe House around the start of February, she claimed that there were no injuries inflicted during the incident, and that this was witnessed by a nurse. What she fails to disclose though is that the same nurse has been referred to in previous articles by us (Substandard Healthcare Oct. 2014) as a result of her unhealthy relationship with the very Riot Squad which continues to forcibly strip-search Republican Prisoners; the same Riot Squad that beat Martin Kelly. The S.E.T. and the Jail Administration are also presently dealing with a number of related complaints from us regarding her, some dating back months. The Republican wing had a regular nurse that day who was accompanied by another S.E.T. member. Why then was the Riot Squad's choice of nurse used in this instance?

Two jail staff members, identified in our subsequent statements and complaints, witnessed the results of Martin's injuries. Furthermore, Sue McAllister, along with Colin Ward (Governor), intervened and impeded a court decision to allow an independent doctor to examine him. This is an established practice within British Prisons in order to let injuries heal without being viewed by impartial and independent doctors. For all the hundreds of Republican Prisoners who have been beaten over the years, some being awarded considerable compensation, not one prison officer has ever been arrested, never mind charged. "Nor Meekly Serve My Time" would be an informative read for those who doubt prison brutality.

Another deliberate fabrication from Sue is on the issue of legal visits only being cancelled on Tuesday 3-2-15 because of a security alert. Solicitors were stopped from entering but were able to use video-link; however, Governors over-ruled staff that came to Republicans' cells to bring them to the legal visit area. Where was the 'security' issue in a video-link consultation? Did the Jail Administration not want first-hand accounts getting out? Also, on Monday 1-2-15 a number of legal visits were denied to us, with solicitors intentionally lied to (numerous solicitors can confirm this), stating that Republican Prisoners refused them. Why would we do this at a time when we were doing all possible to get the truth out; the Prisoner Ombudsman being one such avenue which was availed of via up-to-minute phone calls as events unfolded?

Sue refers specifically to the Independent Assessment Team (IAT) and their recent Stocktake which she points to in a bid to supplant the August 2010 Agreement. The IAT have stated that the work which has taken place since their Stocktake, which has led to the recent spikes in tensions and complaints, "is not what was envisaged in the Stocktake". Sue McAllister and NIPS have officially stated that this work was to "assist prisoner movement", yet David Ford contradicted this in his opening statement during a debate in Stormont on 3-2-15 stating: "NIPS will continue to pay the closest attention to Roe House and take action to protect staff. A clear example of the action that has been taken is the physical changes on the landing that were introduced for that purpose."

Sue is correct in that there are a number of bodies overseeing prisons. The CJINI is one, however; it has repeatedly labelled the regime in Roe House as excessively restrictive since 2005. There has been the criticism also by HMCIP, and by the Anne Owers’ Review Team who commented on the excessive security in comparison to maximum security units in England which hold suspected suicide bombers. Pauline McCabe, the former Prisoner Ombudsman, slated the Jail Administration repeatedly, and created voluminous reports and recommendations sign-posting the way forward. The current ombudsman has criticised the regime frequently, and has commented on DUP interference while exasperatingly stating that the situation "is political and needs a political solution". It must be remembered that the above bodies are not Republican bodies; they are all governmental bodies with the same paymaster as Sue.
In her reference to forced strip-searches taking place across the democratic world, it must be remembered that they do indeed take place, but they have also been condemned by human rights groups all over the democratic world. An alternative to strip-searching was found (as part of the August Agreement), and accepted, in the form of the BOSS chair in 2010, yet never fully implemented.

Sue McAllister is attempting to silence critics and return Maghaberry to the safety of freedom from public scrutiny. She is committed to subterfuge, conflict and cover-ups, not a safe environment. A Conflict-Free Environment will only be achieved by the full implementation of the August 2010 Agreement.

Republican Political Prisoners
Republican Roe House
Maghaberry
2.03.15

BRITAIN PHUCH OFF & STOP POW TORTURE

The British Government, is currently outsourcing the torture of Irish Prisoners (POWs), through the regular use of sectarian thugs in riot squad attire, let loose within Maghaberry prison, to batter prisoners by pretext and proxy. It's purpose, is to criminalize the prisoners, their political status and their political organization, within the working class communities, they come from. It is intended to batter their Cause and their people's aspirations, into submission.

British Sinn Fein who are part of the current ruling junta in Stormont, consistently say, out of the sides of their mouths, that they are ‘working in the background’, on the issue of brutal conditions in Maghaberry. Their ‘Working in the background’ mantra, is as orifice licking in reality, as is their rhetoric, calling on Irish people, to become informers to British Occupation forces. They too, like the fascist Blueshirt government in the south, have a vested electoral interest, in the preservation of the status quo, in the oppression of opposition, with their gombeen, Irish political collaboration, with the British.

The common people of oppressed communities, are on the contrary, taking to the streets, in protest to demand an end to British brutality. Political Prisoners in Occupied Ireland, have been  subjected to a calculated regime of torture, for the last 45 years now, in the latest troubles in Ireland. The truth is, that only massive campaigns of agitation on the streets, as was the case with the 10 hunger strike martyrs, by ordinary Irish people, at home and abroad, will force the British ruling junta, to comply with International Law and standards, on the treatment of POWs.

There is also  a humanitarian aspect to this issue, which needs to be publicized, to appeal to the humanitarian conscience, of both the European and International community, to broaden support. This will definitely increase, the number of people involved in the protest movement. The humanitarian aspect of Maghaberry's brutal conditions, are again a political symptom, of Britain's centuries-old Imperialist role in Ireland. The torturous conditions and covert political internment by remand, emphasise their covert continuous Dirty War, against Irish Republican people.

British Sinn Fein, on the one hand, claim the mantle of the ten martyred Hunger Strikers, for electoral purposes, while with the other hand, are a critical part of the oppressive British regime, that keeps the Orange jackboot, on the necks of the defenceless POWs, battered to the ground. In fact in the latest attacks on the prisoners, they left the imprint of the heel of their boots, on the bloodied heads of prisoners, precisely the same treatment, meted out to Bobby Sands and his hunger strike comrades. The sectarian Orange Order prison service know, they can get away with murder, with a secret Orange Order Chief of Police, all under theTories, as they did with Margaret Thatcher.

The campaign for the Maghaberry POWs, must include a public acceptance, that these prisoners are political prisoners. They are Prisoners of War, a British Dirty War, covertly waged against Irish working class people, under the cover of prejudice and bigotry, using the well-worn terrorist narrative, through all organs, of an Orange Scum State, that extends right into sectarian Maghaberry, with the torture of Irish POWs. A recognition of this critical fact and it's explanation to the public, will lead to a better understanding of why, the British are using Kitsonian tactics and Kitson's dirty tricks, against POWs, using torture, while at the same time, using, the judicial conveyor belt, of secret Diplock courts, for covert internment of political oppostion, all with a nod and a wink, from the collaborationist, politcal beneficiaries of British Sinn Fein. 

BRITISH INTERNATIONAL TORTURE

There’s a debate in Britain on whether to hold a judicial inquiry into UK involvement in torture. This comes in the light of last week’sSenate committee report on use in the US of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques – that is, torture.

But the debate should not be about mere UK involvement or complicity in torture. It is the UK’s actual use of torture – most notably in Iraq – that needs judicial scrutiny in public.

That is the story, despite the fact that today’s al-Sweady inquiry found the most serious allegations to be unfounded. And it’s the story the Ministry of Defence seek to cover up now with its constant attack on “unscrupulous lawyers” bringing forward cases on an “industrial scale”.

But if the UK unlawfully kills and tortures Iraqis in detention, as has happened, then the law requires that the state must investigate all of these cases, and do so at the time of the incidents – that is, from 2003 onwards.

The senate report summarised the techniques used against 39 detainees: “electricity; lighted cigarettes; freezing temperatures; withholding medical treatment; forced nudity; sexual humiliation; object rape; beatings with enough violence to break bones; prolonged sleep deprivation and interrogation; mock executions; various forms of sensory deprivation to include confinement in coffin boxes; prolonged standing and suspension from ceilings and door frames to increase stress; threats of harm to family members; and waterboarding.”

But the shocking facts about Iraq are that the UK used all of the above techniques and many more.

In September 2011 the 1,400-page Baha Mousa public inquiry reportpainstakingly documented how the UK had trained its forces in unlawful interrogation techniques at the Defence Intelligence and Security Centre in Chicksands. These techniques included the use of hooding, sleep deprivation, dietary deprivation, stress techniques and the use of noise – techniques banned from Northern Ireland – and much worse: forced nudity, disorientation, threats, debility and many others.

The report had 73 recommendations to eradicate such illegality. But the reality of what we did in Iraq is so much worse. Over the past few months my team has registered claims for judicial review with the high court on behalf of more than 700 Iraqi victims, adding to the 200 cases previously dealt with by high court judgments in May and October 2013. By the end of January there will be more than 1,100 cases of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, deaths in custody and other unlawful killings. There are at least a further 30 Baha Mousa-type cases we know about.

The book of stories now available is like a latter-day Lord of the Flies, except it describes the work of a modern democratic European state at work in the cradle of civilisation. It is a shocking read: multiple anal rapes and other serious sexual abuse; the routine abuse of women and children; the detention and abuse of minors; the use of dogs; sexual, religious and cultural humiliation; the use of hardcore pornography; serious threats of all types; mock executions. Casual brutality was meted out to all and sundry: to sheikhs in front of their families; to women and children in their homes; to young men held incommunicado; to children casually dispatched by lethal force.

Essentially, as history shows, it was the British who developed coercive interrogation techniques in its counterinsurgency struggles after the second world war. The CIA learned from us, not the other way round.

Further, given that Britain was going into Iraq with the US, there was a political imperative from the highest level for an interrogation capability. The UK wanted to punch its weight with the US.

Today’s al-Sweady report rightly picks up on some of the important systemic issues in play. Though it concludes that allegations of murder and torture made against British soldiers by Iraqi detainees were deliberate lies, its findings that unlawful interrogation techniques were used reinforce the recommendations from the earlier Baha Mousa report. Importantly it picks up on the role of doctors, and medics and finds them to be in dereliction of their duty.

Many of these new Iraqi victims claim to have been seriously abused and assaulted before they were seen by doctors. If the medics had done their job – that is, reported that abuse to their medical commanding officer – the stories of ill treatment would have ended there. Today’s report recommends changes to attempt to bring the doctors into line with their basic duties. It is a further step in the right direction.

What is needed now is a judicial inquiry into Britain’s use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It must require the Ministry of Defenceto do what it has refused to do for years: namely, tell the truth as to how many Iraqis died in custody, died as a result of lethal force, or were interrogated. That inquiry can usefully deal with issues of UK complicity too.

Its main focus, though, must be to ensure that UK forces abide by the rule of law and never again act as torturers and wanton killers in foreign fields.

• Prof Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers acts in all of the cases referred to above

BRITAIN OUTSOURCES POW TORTURE

Personally, I have been interrogated more than a dozen times by the British and on just two occasions, I was mistreated, once by Special Branch of Scottish origin and the other by the RUC. The two occasions I was mistreated were in ordinary police stations. In London two Special Branch men, put my cell mattress, up against the door to muffle the noise, which leads me to believe, it was not officially sanctioned. I was also glued to a chair in Newry RUC station and had a sore arse, ungluing myself, to the great amusement of the Orangemen in British uniform there. I put all of this behind me years ago, for the sake of my own Spirit of Freedom, as I do not wish to live my life, bearing resentments. One of the reasons given by the RUC for their behaviour was that civility costs nothing. I was un-cooperative with them, because I do not recognise British Occupation in Ireland. All of this leads me to believe, that London outsources all of its torture, including the current torture of POWs in Maghaberry Prison, Occupied Ireland, to sectarian members of the Orange Order in British uniforms, as well as its numerous agents worldwide.

In 1976, the European Commission of Human Rights ruled, that British treatment of Irish political prisoners, amounted to "torture". The British Government under Edward Heath, on the 2nd March 1972 in the House of Commons gave the following undertaking;  ".. having reviewed the whole matter with great care and with reference to any future operations, we have decided that the techniques ... will not be used in future, as an aid to interrogation... The statement that I have made covers all future circumstances." However as is usual with the British, they broke that promise, during the Iraq War, where the British Army, used precisely the same techniques, which led to the death of POWs there. They have also taught these techniques, to torturers in other countries worldwide, as they appear to have also done, with their sectarian Orangemen, in British prison uniforms in Occupied Ireland. One of the excuses Britain gives, for invading almost every country worldwide, is that they bring civilization to savages. Clearly this is not the case, if you examine even briefly, their own brutal treatment of POWs in just the second half of the last century, alone. They certainly did not bring civilization to Ireland, where they brought genocide and the current scum state of affairs in Ireland. Since I personally started to make this torture public, I too have been subjected to harassment and threats, via social media and with intimidatory harassment, by motorbike gangs, in the early hours of this morning, at the back of my home, which will not deflect me, one iota, from telling my truth, as I have experienced it. Below is a brief summary of British torture, by a non-Irish assessor, for impartiality reasons, of Britain's long history of using torture worldwide.

Writer Mark Curtis has stated, that in 1971 an official British investigation, found that British torture techniques "played an important part in counter-insurgency operations in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus and the British Cameroons (1960-1), Brunei (1963), British Guiana (1964), Aden (1964-7), Borneo/Malaysia (1965-6), the Persian Gulf (1970-1) and in Occupied Ireland (1971)".

KENYA
The British used beatings, sexual humiliation, hooding, sleep deprivation, and bombarding with white noise.

32 Whites were killed by the Mau Mau during the five-year state of emergency. More whites died in traffic accidents in the capital city, Nairobi.

Kenyans were forced into concentration camps and routinely tortured. Some 150,000 Africans died as a direct result of the British policy.

There was a "constant stream of reports of brutalities by police, military and home guards", wrote Canon Bewes, a British missionary. "Some of the people had been using castration instruments and two men had died under castration."

Other brutalities included slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging people to death, pouring paraffin over suspects and setting them alight and burning eardrums with cigarettes.
A British district officer admitted, "There was outright abuse of power and some of the crimes committed were horrific. One day six Mau Mau suspects were brought into a police station in the neighbouring district to mine. The British police inspector in charge lined them up against a wall and shot them."

A mobile gallows travelled the country. Over 1,000 were hanged, their bodies displayed at crossroads and market places.

MALAYSIA

The British used terror in Malaya.

This involved aerial bombing, massacres of villagers, dictatorial police measures and the "resettlement" of hundreds of thousands of people.

CYPRUS

During the state of emergency, from 1952 to 1957, the British army used torture.

Cypriot Nicos Koshies: "They took me to the Special Branch and they started beating me. They took off all my clothes, they tied my hands and feet. They asked somebody to come in. He was taking a stick to put up my bottom, he was putting cloths in water and putting them on my face so I could not breathe, he threw me down and danced on my stomach when he was wearing boots. After 12 days I could not recognise myself."

James Callaghan in the House of Commons: "On 29 June 1957 an inquest was held into the death of Nicos Georghiou. Dr Clearkin said in evidence that bruises in the head were sufficiently severe to have caused the injuries to the brain, perhaps bumping the head against a hard object."

IRAN

In 1953 a coup organised by the British, overthrew Mossadeq and gave power to the Shah.

British SAS forces trained the Shah's Savak secret police. SAS officers helped train the Iranian army in special operations against the Kurds. The Shah's regime used torture until it was overthrown in 1979.

ADEN/SOUTH YEMEN

In Aden, later known as South Yemen, SAS squads used terror against local villages.

An official investigation found that from 1964 to 1967 detainees at a British interrogation centre were routinely tortured. Their eardrums were burst. Others were forced to lean against walls with their fingertips for day and subjected to white noise for hours.

BAHRAIN

Former detainees in Bahrain have described being beaten, electrocuted, whipped, tied in excruciating positions for days on end, kept awake, starved and having their toenails torn out.

P.S. I could continue with all of this indefinitely, but the above is just a brief summary. If the British keep up with their harassment, I will write a book about all of it and another about their Irish Holocaust. That's a promise and the Irish keep their promises, if they live long enough, in which case someone else, takes up the pen.