AMAL Clooney, the international human rights lawyer, is to represent 10 men tortured by the British Army in Ballykelly in the 1970s.
She is the wife of Hollywood actor George Clooney and has joined a legal team representing a group known as the “hooded men”.
She is now taking the UK to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of the men from Derry.
The men were tortured when they were held without trial at Shackleton Barracks in August 1971.
Fourteen men claimed they were hooded, forced to listen to constant loud static noise, deprived of sleep, food and water, forced to stand in a stress position and beaten if they fell.
The torture procedures were later used by the British Army’s Force Research Unit in Iraq.
Some of the Derry men were thrown from helicopters while their heads were covered with hoods.
They were told they were hundreds of feet in the air and believed they were going to be thrown to their deaths, while in reality they were only about 20 ft from the ground.
In 1976, the European Commission on Human Rights upheld a complaint by the Irish government that the men had been tortured, a ruling that was later overturned on appeal.
The European Court ruled that the men had been subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment, but not torture.
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