“HOODED MAN” Gerry McKerr has died before seeing justice done in his “tireless” fight for victims of British colonial torture, his lawyers announced yesterday.

Mr McKerr, from Lurgan, Co Armagh, was among 14 men snatched up by the British army and subjected to sensory deprivation and beatings, as well as being dangled from moving helicopters while held without trial during the draconian internment campaign of August 1971.

The Irish government, representing the men tortured at Ballykelly army base in Co Derry, brought a case against Britain to the European courts in 1971, with the commission ruling that their mistreatment represented torture.

Britain appealed and in 1978 the European Court of Human Rights diluted the original ruling, finding that the treatment was inhumane and degrading, but not torture.

Britain did not dispute this finding.

In 1972 then prime minister Edward Heath outlawed the use of the “five techniques” of prolonged wall-standing, hooding, subjection to noise, deprivation of sleep, and deprivation of food and drink.

Despite this however, British forces were found to have routinely employed such techniques three decades on during the occupation of Iraq.

Last year the Irish government called on the Strasbourg court to revisit the case after new material emerged suggesting that the British state withheld vital evidence.

Hooded Men case co-ordinator Jim McIlmurray said the news had “delighted” Mr McKerr, who said: “Justice, finally we will get justice.”

Mr McIlmurray added: “I will ensure that Gerry will receive justice. The case will continue in his honour.”

Amnesty International Northern Ireland programme director Patrick Corrigan said: “One of Gerry McKerr’s greatest regrets was that the flawed judgment in the Hooded Men case was used to pave the way for the torture of other prisoners around the world.

“While Gerry did not live to see justice, he did glimpse it on the horizon.

“We trust that, in due course, the court will vindicate the efforts of Gerry and the others to take a stand against state-sanctioned torture.”