Cosantóirí Plan Candle-Lit Procession from McDowell's Office

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | press release Monday February 20, 2006 00:31 by Coilín ÓhAiseadha - Cosantóirí na Síochana - the Peace Network markprice626 at hotmail dot com 086 345 4332 (Mark)

Peace Network demands investigation of CIA aircraft at Shannon

On Thursday 23rd February 2006 at 5.30pm, Cosantóirí na Síochána - the Peace Network - will hold a candle-lit procession from outside the constituency office of Justice Minister Michael McDowell at the Diamond in Ranelagh, Dublin.

This is to insist that US military and CIA-chartered planes landing in Ireland be searched, to ensure compliance with our obligations under Irish human rights law.

Minister McDowell told the Seanad in June 2004: "It would cause me grave concern if I thought people were being smuggled through Irish territory in circumstances that amounted to unlawful detention in Irish law, or international law for that matter."

Article 4 (1) of the Criminal Justice (UN Convention against Torture) Act 2000 states that: "A person shall not be expelled or returned from the State to another state where the Minister is of the opinion that there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture."

But there is evidence that aircraft landing at Shannon have been involved in torture, the peace activists of Cosantóirí na Síochána point out. Flight records for CIA-chartered planes from September 2001 to September 2005 show that six of these planes landed and took off from Shannon over 35 times.

- A Gulfstream V jet, registered as N379P, landed at Shannon at least 16 times in 2002 and 2003, before changing its number to N44982, and later to N8068V.This plane had been involved in the abduction of two men from Sweden in 2001, from where they were "rendered" to Egypt and allegedly tortured.

- A Boeing 737 registered as N4476S, which had been spotted at Shannon, took the abducted German citizen Khaled el-Masri to Afghanistan, where he was tortured.

- Minister for Transport Martin Cullen told the Dáil in October 2004 that the plane which had kidnapped Abu Omar from Italy to Egypt in January 2003, had made a "technical stop" at Shannon during that mission.

Robert Baer, former CIA case officer in the Middle East, has described the rendition process: "The suspect is placed on civilian transport to a third country where, let's make no bones about it, they practise torture. If you want a good interrogation, you send someone to Jordan. If you want them to be killed, you send them to Egypt or Syria."

Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern issued a challenge in November 2005: "If anyone has any evidence of any of these flights, please give me a call and I will have it immediately investigated." Here, the Cosantóirí say, he is trying to blur the distinction between ‘evidence’ and ‘absolute proof’. But absolute proof is not and cannot be required to investigate a crime.

The Irish authorities have criminalised Irish citizens who have collected evidence of Ireland’s facilitation of the CIA’s torture shuttle, and are preventing the Gardaí from searching for further evidence. Fianna Fáil senators have now blocked attempts to launch a Seanad investigation. Cosantóirí na Síochána would like to know why.

The activists of Cosantóirí na Síochána - the Peace Network - call on Mr McDowell to order an immediate investigation to establish whether or not grave breaches of Irish human rights law have been committed at Shannon.

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