Garda and Military Torment in the South

15 February 1999

Garda and Military Torment in the South

You say in your article on Eamon Collins that he was "broken while in RUC custody by a combination of sleep deprivation and mental and physical torture."

When the history of the last thirty years comes to be written it must not ignore the torment, murder and inhuman and degrading treatment inflicted by the Southern state.

In the early 1990's, beatings, stabbings and sleep deprivation were carried out on a wide range of targets including revolutionary socialists in Dublin by the Special Branch and Military Intelligence.

(Restored)

The Garda, operating in uniform, practised close surveillance on revolutionaries and used this to have them dismissed from employment, evicted and tormented by prostitutes, drug addicts and thieves. A favourite tactic of the Garda's agents was to steal passports and make unauthorised withdrawals from their targets' bank accounts without their knowledge or permission. Theft, in other words.

No socialist newspaper can ignore the truth. We need a daily socialist press to practice what Lenin called "police exposures."

Joe Mc Carroll