GAS ATTACK WITNESS

On the day USA, French and British governments were preparing their unauthorised response to an unproven gas attack on civilians in Syria a Belfast man Jim Mc Cann was preparing to launch a book about a real gas attack on prisoners in N.Ireland that was  authorised by the British government.  Survivors of  this attack have spent nearly a half a century trying to make governments admit that the weapon was CR gas. and accept the consequences of what they did.

The survivors' account of the attack has  never been refuted and  the British government has not yet seriously tried to refute it.  But the prisoners' history of it is clear and could not be more damning:

It was in October 1974. Helicopters flew over Long Kesh/Maze prison camp a few miles from Belfast  and dropped clusters of gas-carrying devices containing the highly toxic CR gas. The British Government developed this gas in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  In March 1974 it was issued to the Long Kesh prison guards, 200 hand held spray devices were put in store there, although it is said that they failed to sell the gas to the USA. as highly dangerous, with likely cancerous and mutagenic effects. Members of the British Army, SAS, were trained to use it as a weapon from helicopters with safety to themselves. The effects of CR gas are different from the CS gas often used in N.Ireland streets. CS gas attacks eyes and lungs and people devised some protection against it. CR gas however is very different. In the Long Kesh attack of October 1974 prisoners had "the sensation of drowning", the same effect as that produced by water-boarding which was also authorised by the British Government and used from the early nineteen seventies. Water-boarding was used - and approved- in Sing Sing ,USA, prison until prison reform there about 1920 revised their normal torture procedures . It is still used by USA, British and other military.  

Jim Mc Cann and others have been working since that October 1974 to make Government admit  CR gas was indeed the weapon used in that attack. It has been a long task, not helped by government agencies. 12 to 15 % of the prisoners attacked have since  been diagnosed with cancer including leukaemia and various lung diseases. The British MOD ( Ministry of Defence, the title replacing that of Ministry of War in the governmental campaigns to make all their military attacks abroad appear  "necessary for national security").

After the October 1974 attack prisoners were blood-tested from samples taken by the MOD . But the  former prisoners have found, not surprisingly, that their " medical records have disappeared" especially those for 1974. And no-one is now admitting they were the persons even taking the blood samples, let alone analysing them!

Jim's book is available in bookshops including that of Irish Republican History Museum Conway Street  Belfast BT 13 2DE., Springhill Community House and  local shops.

Meanwhile somebody somewhere will certainly see those one hundred and five  missiles fired against Syria as partly - perhaps mostly - a commercial operation to show what percentage of the manufacturers' interceptors will actually bring missiles down. Expensive demo, unethical, yes, but the arms business is not short of a few dollars, pounds and euros for advertising.

Including our money.