Let’s challenge US ‘torture flight’ assurances

THE British Foreign Secretary has admitted that two rendition flights carrying prisoners were refuelled on Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean.

This fact had been strenuously denied by the US and British governments several times in the past.

The British government had accepted US ‘diplomatic assurances’ that British territory had not been used for the rendition of prisoners to jails in Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Our Government has also accepted US diplomatic assurances that Shannon airport has not been used for the transport of prisoners to and from Guantanamo. The question that remains to be answered is whether any, or how many, of the many thousands of US military and CIA flights that were refuelled at Shannon airport since October 2001 were carrying prisoners, in contravention of the UN convention against torture?

Edward Horgan

Newtown

Castletroy

Co Limerick