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Liam Holden (born 1954) is a Northern 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 1969.〔("Last NI death sentence man Holden bids to clear name" ), BBC News, 12 August 2011〕 In July 1973 the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, commuted Holden's sentence to life imprisonment.〔("Liam Holden, Given Death Sentence For Murder Of Frank Bell, Has Conviction Quashed" ), ''Huffington Post'', 21 June 2012; accessed 23 February 2014.〕〔(''The Guineapigs'' ) by John McGuffin (Penguin, 1974/1981), p. 137 (NOTE: OUT OF PRINT)〕 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.〔 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.〔〔 On 21 June 2012, in the light of the CCRC investigation which confirmed that the methods used to extract confessions were unlawful,〔(Man granted soldier murder appeal following waterboarding evidence (''The Guardian'', 4 May 2012) )〕〔 the conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in Belfast, when Holden was 58 years old.〔 ("Murder verdict of man sentenced to death quashed" ), ''The Irish Times'', 22 June 2012; accessed 23 February 2014.〕 ==Background== At the time of his arrest in October 1972 Holden lived in the staunchly republican Ballymurphy area of Belfast.〔 Many people in his community had been arrested; stories of mistreatment and torture during these arrests bore a similarity to each other and the government of Ireland initiated proceedings in 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.〔 It transpired that a British interrogation policy was in place breaching Article 3, known as "the Five techniques".〔 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 ECHR concluded the policy constituted "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of internees.〔(Jeremy Waldron, ''The Law'' (London, 1990), pp. 90–92 )〕 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. 〔(''Helsinki Watch, Human Rights in Northern Ireland'' ), New York, 1991, pg. 2. 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Liam Holden」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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