Ministerial waffle won’t divert attention from ‘torture flights’

FOREIGN Minister Dermot Ahern says the EU parliament committee engaged in political point-scoring in its report on US military flights through Shannon.

The minister is paid well enough by all of us to know Irish law. His Government has been given a list of the aircraft that have been involved in torture in other locations, so surely steps can be taken to fulfil Ireland’s obligations under the Criminal Justice (UN Convention Against Torture) Act.

Mr Ahern also lamented that the report was not ‘forward-looking’. Well, I’m sure it would be very well to brush the past under the carpet and waffle about ‘what might be done’, but that would be an easy way of avoiding the fact that the report highlighted the systematic failure of the Irish State to comply with the UN Convention Against Torture or Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Perhaps the minister doesn’t like the implications, given that under the Criminal Justice (UN Convention Against Torture) Act, 2000, S5(1), any person suspected of committing, aiding or abetting torture (whether alleged to have taken place in this State or not) can be imprisoned for life upon conviction. Rather than simply turning a blind eye, it seems on occasion these flights had the protection of the gardaí.

US diplomatic assurances, as Mr Ahern well knows, are worth nothing and are not legally enforceable. Besides, they came from the same people who defended the use of torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, saying it was not really torture at all.

The minister told the parliament the allegations were made too late and were based on a mass of “material which could not have been known at the time”.

This is incorrect. My first formal complaint was in October 2004, and these aircraft continued to come through in 2005 and 2006, despite the fact that the gardaí were given the planes’ registration numbers even after they were changed to hide their identities.

I searched the US Federal Aviation Authority’s database and printed documents for the gardaí showing the change in registration to look out for when one plane landed at Shannon.

Still no action was taken. Mr Ahern referred to numerous garda investigations, but they did not use the powers they have to board the plane to do a quick headcount.

The minister also said they did “a random check of some of the 147 planes mentioned”.

In this he was referring to checking the ownership records, which is not a huge task, so why did they only pick some the flights to check out?

A journalist in the UK managed to compile a much larger list without the resources of the departments of Foreign Affairs, Justice and Transport. What was lacking in Ireland? was the political will to find the truth

The Government said it was the job of the Garda Síochána to do this, and it would not interfere. However, when I spoke to the gardaí at Shannon, the consistent reply was that the Government had an understanding there was nothing on these planes.

Since when does an independent police force take Government policy and diplomatic assurances into account when upholding the law?

But Mr Ahern’s most farcical suggestion to the parliament was this: “If you’re going to move people like that — ie, prisoners on extraordinary rendition — you do not want to land at a civilian airport like Shannon because you must have a pre-existing medical support structure in place when you land. If a prisoner or detainee becomes medically distressed, you have to have medics on hand, and you will have those in military bases such as places in Germany or England”.

A woman member of the parliamentary committee, questioning Mr Ahern, said that given the places to which detainees were being taken (torture chambers), she did not believe their medical distress would be the main concern of the CIA.

Given that detainees are hooded, gagged, sedated and bound, I wonder in what way would the CIA notice medical distress even if they did care?

Mr Ahern offered plenty of waffle, but he did not answer all the questions put to him and did nothing to reassure the public that Shannon was not a stopover for CIA torture squads.

Tim Hourigan

12 Cedar Court

Kennedy Park

Limerick