Ahern blames EU parliament for unchecked 'terror' flights

Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern today accused the European Parliament of failing to act to ensure CIA flights are not carrying terror suspects to torture camps.

Even though a high level EU committee found the Government allowed 147 of these to stop at our airports unchecked, Mr Ahern claimed his suggestions to keep tabs on the US secret service had been ignored.

As MEPs approved the damning findings on ’extraordinary renditions’ – the controversial transfer of terror suspects for interrogation – Mr Ahern said the real number of suspicious flights was much lower.

“The alleged figure of 147 supposedly-suspicious flights is grossly inflated. It compares to only three suspicious flights identified by the Council of Europe,” Mr Ahern said.

“The work of the committee began with the template that two and two equals five and went steadily downhill after that.”

And he also accused MEPs in the European Parliament of political point scoring.

The report found Mr Ahern failed to answer some questions during the year-long probe into CIA activities.

It also said the CIA secretly held terror suspects illegally in the EU before flying to States that practise torture.

It criticised the Government’s acceptance of diplomatic assurances from the US as falling far short of its human rights obligations.

Mr Ahern said his suggestion to reform the regulation of civil aviation and the system of flight classification had been ignored.

He said the 60-year-old Chicago Convention, which allows transit flights through Europe without any information on passengers, crew or cargo, should be reviewed.

And he claimed that, despite a positive response from Spain and Portugal, nothing had been done.

“This committee missed an opportunity to drive real change,” Mr Ahern said.

The report named nine prisoners, illegally detained and transferred for torture, on planes which landed in Ireland.

And Irish MEPs rounded on the minister for failing to act. Labour’s Proinsias De Rossa said it was fiction to try to blame an outdated Chicago Convention as a sovereignty clause could have been invoked to halt the stopovers.

“Fianna Fáil made strenuous efforts to remove key facts and criticisms from the report relating to Ireland and the other EU states which are known to have colluded with the illegal CIA rendition programme,” Mr De Rossa.

“The Irish Government now needs to drop its belligerence against those of us who have done our democratic duty in holding them to account.”

Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald said: “This report paints a shocking picture of human rights abuse and illegal activity, all of which was tolerated by Member States including Ireland.

“The Irish Government’s hear-no-evil, see-no-evil approach to illegal renditions is unconvincing and unacceptable.”

The report noted the absence of parliamentary scrutiny of either Irish or foreign intelligence services and said it created the potential for abuse.

Last year the Irish Government blocked attempts for a parliamentary inquiry into the alleged torture flights.

The EU committee which compiled the report urged Dublin to allow for such an investigation in light of its findings.

It has also called for unspecified sanctions against member states found to have violated EU human rights principles.

But Mr Ahern claimed there was a clear, implicit recognition that at no stage were prisoners transferred through Ireland as part of an extraordinary rendition operation.

The report concluded that Britain, Poland, Germany, Italy and other EU nations were all aware of secret CIA flights over Europe and the abduction of terror suspects by US agents.