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The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland has responded to the BBC NI documentary on the so called ‘hooded men,’ saying he would class the interrogation techniques used on them by the security forces as “torture”.

Archbishop Eamon Martin was commenting after the programme was broadcast on BBC One NI on Tuesday night.

The documentary focused on the claims of 14 men, who in 1971 were suspected to have been members of the fledgling Provisional IRA and selected from hundreds of internees for ‘deep interrogation”.

The questioning was accompanied by the ‘five techniques’: white noise; wall-standing; hooding, and deprivation of food and sleep.

However, the courts have determined that although the treatment was “inhumane and degrading,” it did not amount to torture and, in December 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that it would be unfair to retrospectively require adherence to the requirements of the Human Rights Act, which became law in the UK in 2000.

Lawyers for the men have repeatedly sought to have their treatment recognised as illegal torture.

Archbishop Martin described the treatment of the men as “appalling” and said he classed it as torture.

“At the time of these events my predecessor as Archbishop of Armagh, Cardinal Conway, was in no doubt that the treatment being meted out was humiliating and brutal, and he made this known to the highest authorities,” Archbishop Martin told the Irish News.

“Today any right thinking person would describe such appalling, inhumane, degrading and cruel actions as torture, with no place in a civilised society.”

One of those interviewed on camera is former army general Mike Jackson.

He said: “Torture is illegal. Whether depriving somebody of sleep for two nights should or should not be illegal I am a bit more uncertain.”

Former assistant chief constable and head of Special Branch Raymond White was a sergeant when internment was introduced.

Also appearing on the programme, Mr White suggests the treatment “came very close to the borderline” where inhuman treatment meets torture, but did not cross that line.

"The treatment [the men] received you could say came very close to the borderline that must be there between de-humanising treatment and actual torture.

"I don’t think, in the round, that it actually was torture as I would have described it at the time or since,” he said.

Catholic archbishop joins those calling treatment of 'Hooded Men' torture