Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 21 March 1979.
Mr Gerry Fitt
, Belfast West
12:00,
21 March 1979
The argument that I have been putting forward, Mr. Deputy Speaker—that is why I believe that you have realised that I am within the bounds of order—is that we are discussing the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act as applied to Northern Ireland. People have been interrogated under section 12 of that Act. The same interrogations take place also in other parts of the United Kingdom.
Now that the matter has been brought to my attention by the hon. Member for Down, North (Mr. Kilfedder)—although I do not believe that it was his original intention—I want to refer to the new revised procedures to which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said that he will agree. I refer to the provision of closed circuit television cameras in the cell in which a person is being interrogated.
Let us suppose, for example, that when these closed circuit television cameras become available, one of my constituents is arrested under section 12 of the Act and is brought to Castlereagh. He will be placed in a cell with an interrogator. It would be interesting to know how the camera would be focused and whether it would take in the entire cell or just the top half of the bodies of the interrogator or the person interrogated. I wonder whether it could be shifted around or whether a bit of chewing gum could be put on it, as is suggested can be done with the spy holes in cells.
There will be no sound coming from that cell in which my constituent is being interrogated under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, but other policemen will allegedly be watching on the monitor. The interrogator could tell my constituent that no one could hear. If he did not sign a confession, he would be put in a police car, dropped off in the middle of Sandy Row and the word spread that he was a Republican suspect. He could be threatened with being brought back night after night until he made a confession—and many of my constituents were interrogated at Castlereagh.
The Bennet report recommends specific prohibitions in the interrogation of suspects under the Prevention of Terrorism Act or the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act:
(i) any order or action requiring a prisoner to strip or expose himself or herself;
(ii) any order or action requiring a prisoner to adopt or maintain any unnatural or humiliating posture;
(iii) any order or action requiring a prisoner to carry out unnecessarily any physically exhausting or demanding action or to adopt or maintain any such stance;
(iv) the use of obscenities, insults or insulting language "—
I have just said that no sound will come out of the cell—
about the prisoner, his family, friends or associates, his political beliefs, religion or race;
(v) the use of threats of physical force or of such things as being abandoned in a hostile area; and
(vi) the use of threats of sexual assault or misbehaviour.
We must ask why these recommendations were made. They were not just pulled out of the air. Judge Harry Bennett did not suggest that the police might do that and they should therefore be told not to. It was not just a figment of the imagination, and no one would honestly believe that it was.
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