Liam Holden
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(aged 68)
Liam Holden | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1953 |
| Died | 15 September 2022 (aged 68) |
Liam Holden (1953 – 15 September 2022) was an Irish man who, in 1973 at the age of 19, was sentenced to death by hanging following his conviction for killing a British soldier in Northern Ireland. He was the last person sentenced to death in the UK, as Northern Ireland maintained the death penalty following its abolition in Great Britain in 1965.[1] There were, however, cases in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man where death sentences were issued after this date, the last against Anthony Teare. As no one had been executed in Northern Ireland since Robert McGladdery in 1961, it was held unlikely that the sentence would be carried out.
In July 1973, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, commuted Holden's sentence to life imprisonment.[2][3] He was released in 1989.
In 2002, Holden brought his conviction to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) which investigates miscarriages of justice in Northern Ireland.[4] He gave detailed testimony of being subjected to a wide range of torture techniques, including waterboarding, following his interrogation (with his brother, Patrick) in October 1972 regarding the killing of British Parachute Regiment soldier Private Frank Bell on 17 September 1972.[5][4]
On 21 June 2012, in the light of the CCRC investigation, which confirmed that the methods used to extract confessions were unlawful,[6][7] the conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in Belfast, when Holden was 58 years old.[5]
At the time of his arrest in October 1972 Holden lived in the staunchly republican Ballymurphy area of Belfast.[7] Many people in his community had been arrested; stories of mistreatment and torture during these arrests bore a similarity to each other. The government of Ireland initiated proceedings in the European Court of Human Rights, the judicial body established by the Council of Europe to hear claims under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), on behalf of a sample number of internees against the government of the United Kingdom, claiming that their human rights were being breached under Article 3 of the ECHR, which outlawed torture and cruel and degrading treatment.[8]
It was shown that the military had adopted an interrogation policy known as "the five techniques" that breached Article 3.[8] The European Commission on Human Rights, when it finally heard the case in 1978, concluded that this policy constituted 'torture' of prisoners under Article 3 of the European Commission on Human Rights, while the European Court of Human Rights concluded the policy constituted "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of internees.[8]
More people died in 1972 than during any other year of "The Troubles". There were 467 conflict-related deaths, 1800 explosions and more than 10,000 shooting incidents that year.[9] Bell's death made him the 100th British soldier to have been killed in Northern Ireland in 1972.[7]