Liam Holden (1953 – 15 September 2022) was an 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.
[1] There were, however, cases in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man where death sentences were issued after this date, the last against Anthony Teare.
In July 1973, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, commuted Holden's sentence to life imprisonment.
In 2002, Holden brought his conviction to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) which investigates miscarriages of justice in Northern Ireland.
[4] 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.
[5][4] On 21 June 2012, in the light of the CCRC investigation, which confirmed that the methods used to extract confessions were unlawful,[6][7] the conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in Belfast, when Holden was 58 years old.
As Holden's legal team demonstrated, his arrest alone was illegal under British law at the time on several counts.
[4] Liam Holden, in his 1973 testimony, said that after the interrogation he was taken from the school and driven to the outskirts of Belfast, where a gun was put to his head and he was told to sign a confession.
He was taken to the condemned man's cell in C wing, and by virtue of being on death row was allowed a black and white television and two bottles of beer a day.
By July 1973 capital punishment was banned and Holden's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
The judge said "the plaintiff was subjected to waterboarding; he was hooded; he was driven in a car flanked by soldiers to a location where he thought he would be assassinated".