The Gazette 1972

UNREPORTED IRISH CASES F Former Prisoner gets £300 in Test Case for Ill-Treatment

offeree he was going to be charged. Thus the family would have known what situation he had to meet and they would have known what to tell a solicitor. It was a pure technicality which should never have occurred, but one upon which the plaintiff could rely, the judge said. At the start of his outline of what happened after Mr. Moore's arrest, Judge Conaghan said there was one contradiction which remained unexplained. It was agreed that ten soldiers in three vehicles came to the plaintiff's home. However, Mr. Moore said the army burst open the lock on his front door at 4 a.m., came into his home and arrested him. The military version was that the plaintiff had opened the door for them some time after 4.30 a.m. in response to their knocking. "The dispute matters little in the final analysis, but the curious circumstance is that, although the arrest report records the arrest as 04.35 hours, the records at Ballykinlar show it is 4 a.m.", Judge Conaghan said. Ill-treatment at Lurgan and Ballykinlar There was undisputed evidence from both sides as to what happened in the converted factory at Pine- hurst, near Lurgan, where Moore said others were first taken. Each person arrested had to sit on a chair facing a wall and the rule was—no talking, looking around, smoking or sleeping. "A soldier stationed behind each man enforced the rule, and where necessary nudged or poked the arrested with a truncheon or struck the chair to secure compliance. Nobody was allowed to nod." At the Ballykinlar holding centre, where the men were taken at about 10 a.m. on August 9th, they were put into reception huts some of which were denuded of all furnishings, racks, presses and stools, and the same strict rules were applied as at Pinehurst. "The doors of the huts were dirty, and nails and screws had been left on the floor at points where they had fallen, if indeed any were removed." Custody of the 89 arrested men was entrusted to Lieutenant Ian Roger Barton of the Royal Military Police, with the assistance of Sergeant Smith and Sergeant Love and their separate platoons, each of about 15 men. Judge Conaghan said the M.P.s admitted that exercises, or as they preferred to call them, "changes of position" went on in the huts, yet Superintendent MagiU of the R.U.C. said that he saw none and heard no commands being given. He did not appear to have had much contact with the huts, the Judge said. The exercise went on until midnight on August 9th and were resumed in some fashion at about 3 a.m. and continued on Tuesday except in the hut reserved for people who were to be released. Judge Conaghan quoted the Compton Report as say- ing : "compulsory exercises must have caused hardship to some, at least, of those who were made to do them, especially those in poor physical condition, and we have noticed as a particular,, hardship that some men were woken up to do them in order to secure uniformity of action in the hut." Judge Conaghan commented : "The evidence before me also warrants such a finding." Particulars of brutality inflicted Moore and his witnesses had given evidence that 88

A Northern Ireland judge ruled that men were detained in "primitive circumstances", which were "deliberate, unlawful and harsh", following their arrests by security forces during the big internment scoop on August 9th last year. Judge Rory Conaghan was giving his reserved judg- ment at Lurgan County Court in a civil action brought by a former detainee, William John Moore, of Bleary, Portadown, against Mr. Graham Shillington, Chief Constable of the R.U.C., and the British Ministry of Defence for alleged wrongful arrest and assault. Mr. Moore was awarded the total damages he had claimed, £300, which is the highest amount a County Court judge can award. The hearing of the action, at Armagh County Court in January lasted seven days. Mr. Moore was released from the prison ship Maidstone after 13 days' detention. In his lengthy judgment which took 47 minutes to deliver, Judge Conaghan said three British Army witnesses had lied in their evidence about how the physical exercises which detainees were forced to under- go had started. He referred to "a deafening silence" from the R.U.C. and the higher ranks of the army about what went on in the detention huts at Bally- kinlar army camp. Authority for the rigid discipline and regimentation at both places must have come from top- ranking officers. Judge Conaghan also suggested that an. Army doctor "shut his eyes" to what was happening to the detainees and said that a military police officer in charge of 89 detainees "abandoned responsibility" for them to his N.C.O.s. Test case—plaintiff absent for fear of arrest The action is regarded as a test case and it is likely that similar actions may be initiated by other detainees and internees. When the action was heard in Armagh, Mr. Moore, who is married and has two children, did not attend. He has been living in the South for several months and did not come to the hearing because the police and army refused to give an undertaking that if he did come North he would not be arrested. At a preliminary hearing the defendants' counsel informed the judge that the security forces wanted to interview Mr. Moore and that if he came within the jurisdiction he would be arrested for interrogation. Judge Conaghan said that the points at issue were— was the plaintiff unlawfully arrested in. the early hours of August 9th, and was he treated afterwards in such a manner as to give rise to an action for assault, trespass to or battery of his person against the defen- dants or either of them by reasons of the acts of their servants and agents in the course of their employment? After considering the evidence of arrest, and the authorisation for it, he held that the original arrest was wrongful and that the plaintiff was entitled to damages. Mr. Moore should have been informed, at least, that he was being detained for interrogation for a period of 48 hours and if he was going to be charged with an offence, then he should have been told with what