Thirty five years ago, the IRA murdered 21 in the Birmingham pub bombings. Six Irishmen were jailed for crimes they did not commit, and spent 16 years in jail before their convictions were quashed. But how was life on the outside? Jonathan Owen talks to Johnny Walker
As blows rained down on Johnny Walker's stomach during a brutal beating at the hands of the police, he realised that in saying almost nothing, he had still said too much. "They were beating me up and my shirt came open and I told them I had stomach ulcers, so all the punches went down there... I should have shut my big mouth," he says, his voice quavering.
Even now – 35 years after he was wrongly convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings – the trauma he endured has left raw mental scars to go with the physical marks left by torture and beatings at the hands of the police and prison officers. "I still got parts of my body that is not right... they knocked all my teeth out... I'll carry these scars to my grave."
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