Torture,Rights,Rules and Wars: Ireland to Iraq

Abstract

This piece¹ responds to some of the challenges posed by Rosemary Foot in her article, ‘Torture: The Struggle over a Peremptory Norm in a Counter-Terrorist Era’, also published in International Relations. It looks again at the debates about the seeming rise in the acceptability of torture in the post-9/11 environment, reflects on what the use of ‘torture’ in Ireland during the 1970s might tell us, and suggests ways of thinking about rules, norms and the mistreatment of terrorist suspects.