Operation Demetrius
| Operation Demetrius | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Troubles and Operation Banner | |
 The entrance to Compound 19, one of the sections of Long Kesh internment camp |
|
| Location |
Northern Ireland |
| Objective | Arrest of suspected Irish republican militants |
| Date | 9–10 August 1971 04:00 – ? (UTC+01:00) |
| Executed by |
 British Army Royal Ulster Constabulary
|
| Outcome | 342 people arrested and interned 7,000 civilians displaced |
| Casualties | (see below) |
Operation Demetrius was a British Army operation in Northern Ireland on 9–10 August 1971, during the Troubles. It involved the mass arrest and internment (imprisonment without trial) of 342 people suspected of being involved with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which was waging a campaign for a united Ireland against the British state. It was proposed by the Northern Ireland Government and approved by the British Government. Armed soldiers launched dawn raids throughout Northern Ireland, sparking four days of violence in which 20 civilians, two IRA members and two British soldiers were killed. All of those arrested were Irish nationalists, the vast majority of them Catholic. Due to faulty intelligence, many had no links with the IRA. Ulster loyalist paramilitaries were also carrying out acts of violence, which were mainly directed against Catholics and Irish nationalists, but no loyalists were included in the sweep.
The introduction of internment, the way the arrests were carried out, and the abuse of those arrested, led to mass protests and a sharp increase in violence. Amid the violence, about 7,000 people fled or were forced out of their homes. The interrogation techniques used on the internees were described by the European Commission of Human Rights in 1976 as torture, but the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on appeal in 1978 that while the techniques were "inhuman and degrading", they did not constitute torture. It was later revealed that the British Government had withheld information from the ECHR and that a policy of torture had in fact been authorized by British Government ministers. In December 2014 the Irish government asked the ECHR to revise its 1978 judgement.
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