Following the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971, Fr Raymond Murray and Fr Denis Faul began a campaign to highlight the torture and ill treatment of many internees and to seek justice on their behalf. They were particularly concerned about those who were subjected to sensory deprivation techniques and who became known as the Hooded Men. This campaign resulted in the publication of the same name, published in 1974. This unprecedented and truly ground-breaking composition was later to form the bedrock in the fight for truth, justice and accountability in the case of the Hooded Men.

In the original case, brought to the European Commission, the finding of torture was subsequently overturned and downgraded to ‘inhuman and degrading treatment’. However, in 2014, through the work of many people across all corners of civic society, new evidence was discovered which fundamentally undermined the basis for the original finding. It indicated that the UK had deliberately misled the European Court. The Irish government accepted in court in December 2014 that they would apply to reopen the case of the Hooded Men. That case is now reaching a climax. 

This revised edition contains the original statements taken down by Raymond Murray, a trained historian, shortly after the men underwent the brutal interrogation methods known as the ‘Five Techniques’. That original book, never before published in a trade edition, is now available with a new foreword by the solicitor for the men themselves and a postscript on their lives and case to date by their case representative.

Monsignor Murray, a Catholic priest, is a well-known crusader for human rights in Northern Ireland and over the years he has produced, with the late Monsignor Denis Faul, over 33 books and pamphlets on violations of human rights in Ireland. Raymond Murray also wrote The SAS in Ireland and Hard time—Armagh Gaol 1971–1986.

Monsignor Raymond Murray