FORMER IRA prisoners are to attempt to have their convictions overturned and claim compensation.
Some 300 republican inmates are to allege that confessions were extracted from them under duress amid mistreatment in Northern Ireland security-force holding centres. Many ex-prisoners cannot find jobs, insurance or loans because of their convictions. They are barred from entry to countries like the US.
Sinn Féin Northern Ireland Assembly member Carál Ní Chuilín said: "A lot of men in Long Kesh were only there because they signed a confession extracted from them under extreme circumstances in places like Castlereagh and Gough.
"I am aware that there are a lot of people coming forward to build a case up. The issue about this is that this affected republicans and loyalists, and people from unionist and nationalist working-class areas were in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up spending their lives in jail."
However, Michael Culbert, director of republican ex-prisoners' group Coiste, said there was no organised attempt to overturn convictions but he added he was aware of a number of cases.
"There is a difference between individuals and it being a structured matter, there is no structured campaign." He said he didn't know exactly how many people would take cases but doubted 300 were involved.
Jim Allister MEP (Independent) said convicts had been subjected to due process. "No one should deny that occasional miscarriages of justice occurred, but the suggestion that hundreds of IRA terrorists, duly convicted, were in fact innocent, is preposterous," he said.
"Let's remember the IRA murdered over 2,000 innocent people. Would they now have us believe that persons other than those convicted committed those and other heinous crimes?"
Earlier this year Danny Morrison, Sinn Féin's former publicity director, challenged his 1991 conviction for falsely imprisoning IRA informer Sandy Lynch a year earlier.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission recommended Mr Morrison's case go back to the Court of Appeal. It is understood the prosecution service is unlikely to contest the appeal.
Allegations which led to Castlereagh's reputation for ill-treatment first surfaced in the 1970s at a time when republican violence was at its peak.
In one three-year period about this time, more than 3,000 people were charged with terrorist offences based largely on confessions obtained at Castlereagh.
There were also numerous allegations of torture and physical abuse. A report by Amnesty International published in 1977 documented 58 cases of alleged mistreatment at Castlereagh by plain clothes detectives and called for a public inquiry.
- (PA)