Real Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Theories Book III

Operation Demetrius

Operation Demetrius was a British Army operation in Northern Ireland on 9–10 August 1971, during the Troubles. It involved the mass arrest and internment (imprisonment without trial) of 342 people suspected of being involved with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which was waging an armed campaign for a united Ireland against the British state. That campaign took off in January 1970, with arson and bomb attacks directed against shops, offices and industrial premises. In July 1971 the IRA intensified their activities to coincide with the Orange Order marching season. The Provisional wing of the IRA was responsible for a majority of the 298 explosions, 320 shooting incidents and 600 conflict-related injuries inflicted from January to July 1971. Their targets included normal judicial processes: witnesses were murdered, jury members intimidated and policemen killed.

The IRA campaign provoked an Ulster loyalist backlash and fragmented the governing Unionist Party. These developments led British ministers to fear that Northern Ireland was sliding towards civil war. Brian Faulkner, Prime Minister in the devolved Northern Ireland Government, concluded that he had to do something tough to shore up his flagging authority, and saw internment as his best available option. British ministers assented because they feared that if Faulkner fell his successor would be so hardline that they would have no option but to introduce direct rule. They were adamant that Faulkner should carry the political responsibility if internment failed.

Senior British Army commanders argued that internment was unnecessary on military grounds, that it would raise sectarian tensions and strengthen the IRA. They eventually agreed to it with reluctance, and extracted the concession that Faulkner would also ban planned loyalist parades.

Soldiers launched dawn raids throughout Northern Ireland on 9 August 1971, sparking four days of violence in which 20 civilians, two IRA members and two British soldiers were killed. All of those arrested were Irish nationalists, the majority of them Catholic. Because of the withdrawal of the police from nationalist areas in 1969, the rushed implementation of Operation Demetrius and flawed intelligence systems, many were interned who had no links with the current IRA.

The introduction of internment, the way the arrests were carried out, and the abuse of those arrested, led to mass protests and a sharp increase in violence. Amid the violence, about 7,000 people fled or were forced out of their homes. The interrogation techniques used on some of the internees were described by the European Commission of Human Rights in 1976 as torture. The superior court, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), ruled on appeal in 1978 that while the techniques were "inhuman and degrading", they did not, in this instance, constitute torture. It was later revealed that the British government had withheld information from the ECtHR and that the policy had been authorized by British government ministers. In light of new evidence in December 2014, the Irish government asked the ECtHR to revise its 1978 judgment. The ECtHR declined the request in 2018.

Under direct rule, British ministers modified the policy of internment in December 1972. The power to detain people without trial was transferred from ministers to an independent tribunal and a separate appeal mechanism was created. The new arrangements were rebranded 'detention without trial'. Internment was abolished in December 1975. In total 1,981 people had been interned; 1,874 were nationalist, 107 loyalist. The first loyalist internees were detained in February 1973.

Background and planning

Internment had been used a number of times during Northern Ireland's (and the Republic of Ireland's) history, but had not previously been used during the Troubles, which began in the late 1960s. Ulster loyalist paramilitaries, such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), had been engaged in a low-level violent campaign since 1966. After the August 1969 riots, the British Army was deployed on the streets to bolster the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Up until this point, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) had been largely inactive. However, as the violence worsened, the IRA was divided over how to deal with it. It split into two factions, the Provisional IRA and Official IRA. In 1970–71, the Provisionals began a campaign of violence against the British Army and the RUC. The Officials' policy was more defensive. During 1970–71, there were numerous clashes between state forces and the two wings of the IRA, between the IRAs and loyalists, and occasionally between the IRAs. Most loyalist attacks were directed against Catholic civilians, but they also clashed with state forces and the IRA on a number of occasions.