THE GOVERNMENT must admit that Shannon airport was used as a launching pad for rendition operations by the CIA, according to a new report from Amnesty International Ireland.
Executive director Colm O'Gorman yesterday launched Breaking the Chain: Ending Ireland's Role in Renditionsand claimed the Government had opted to "turn a blind eye" to the situation.
“The Irish Government does not know what is going through Ireland’s airports on secret CIA flights,” he said.
“If the Government is to have a shred of credibility on this, it must first acknowledge that Shannon was used by the CIA as a launching pad for kidnapping. This is illegal under international law.”
A spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs, which yesterday took a number of media queries about the report, said it was not able to respond to the report last night.
The report says the election of US president Barack Obama should not give Irish people a “false impression that rendition and similar covert practices may be at an end”.
It calls on the Government to adopt a pro-active approach to identifying aircraft and operators using Irish airspace.
“Government must also support and encourage a climate in which the investigation of suspicious planes is viewed as necessary and urgent, rather than embarrassing and potentially damaging to the national interest.”
Meanwhile, Mr O’Gorman said the Government should not “rely on assurances” from other administrations.
“The Government relied on dubious assurances from a discredited US administration that Shannon was not used to transport prisoners despite similar assurances given to the British government being shown to be worthless,” he said.
“So-called ‘rendition’ operations are nothing more than kidnapping and torture,” Mr O’Gorman added.
“In the cases of four men – Abu Omar, Khaled al Maqtari, Khaled el Masri and Binyam Mohamed – CIA agents used Shannon airport as a launching pad for rendition operations. We know this and the Government knows this but it prefers to turn a blind eye to what happens at Shannon.”
The report sets out a series of recommendations for the Departments of Justice and Transport.
These include a recommendation that the Minister for Justice make a public statement “confirming the independence of the police in respect of preventing and investigating renditions”.
The report says the Minister should give “an explicit expression of support for the investigation by An Garda Síochána of aircraft with a prior record of involvement in rendition circuits”.
