RIP Gerry Conlon -- wrongfully jailed for 'being Irish in the wrong place'
RIP Gerry Conlon -- wrongfully jailed for 'being Irish in the wrong place'
Monday, June 23, 2014
By Stuart Munckton
“When Gerry Conlon, who has died aged 60 of lung cancer, met survivors of the US's Guantánamo Bay detention camp, he found that their 21st-century experiences mirrored his in the 1970s,” The Guardian wrote about the Belfast-born Conlon who passed away on June 21.
He spent more than 14 years in jail from 1974-1989 after being found guilty by British authorities for pub bombings in Guilford that he did not commit.
“He too had been hooded, shackled and subjected to rendition -- from his home in Northern Ireland to a police station in Surrey -- threatened, brutalised and tortured until he confessed to the IRA bombings in 1974 of pubs in the garrison towns of Guildford and Woolwich.”
Conlon, along with three other Irish people known as the “Guildford Four”, was jailed in 1974 after being tortured into making false confessions about their role in the bombings, for which some of had strong alibis.
Their convictions were finally overturned in 1989, despite the fact that, just months after they were sentenced, the Irish Republican Army members who had actually carried out the bombing insisted to British police that the wrong people had been jailed.
More:
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56713
= new reply since forum marked as read
Gerry Conlon's father who was only guilty of trying to visit his son.... Many other family members were also charged and jailed for nothing more than simply being related to Gerry Conlon.
