The U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, James Kenny, is refusing to attend the Dail (Parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the use of Shannon airport for so-called “rendition flights.”
Kenny was asked to attend the hearing following claims by Amnesty International that Shannon Airport is being used by the CIA in illegally transporting suspected terrorists to countries where they face torture.
An invitation was issued by the Oireachtas committee in December, but it is understood that the U.S. State Department will not allow its ambassadors to appear before parliamentary committees anywhere to discuss the issue.
Kenny would have expected a serious grilling on the issue from a number of leading opposition Dail members opposed to the war in Iraq, among them Labor’s Michael D. Higgins and Independent Tony Gregory.
But his refusal to attend only adds to the growing pressure on the Irish government to inspect aircraft used by U.S. intelligence agencies in Ireland.
Last week the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Alvaro Gil-Robles called on the government to ensure that the United States was not illegally transporting prisoners through Shannon.
Gil-Robles said inspections of the planes landing at Shannon would facilitate Ireland honoring its international obligations.
“In so far as so-called extraordinary rendition flights are concerned, states must be in a position, where there is doubt, to establish who is on board planes transiting via their airports, whether they are traveling freely or are detained, and if the latter, under whose authority they are being transported and for what purpose,” he said.
The Council of Europe is currently investigating allegations that prisoners were taken for torture elsewhere through European airports, and that the CIA may have operated in countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Kosovo and Macedonia.
In preliminary findings issued last week a Swiss senator, Dick Marty, said that allegations of illegal U.S. conduct were gaining credibility.
Ireland has promised to cooperate fully with the council’s investigations but so far has accepted assurances from the U.S. government that nothing illegal has taken place at Shannon. No inspections have been carried out.
Before Christmas, the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern that the airport had not been used for “untoward” purposes, or as a transit point for terror suspects.
She also insisted that rendition – transferring detainees from country to country without legal process – was permissible under international law and insisted that the U.S. government seeks assurances on treatment from receiving nations.
Ahern insists that the government does not support torture, or the use of so-called “extraordinary rendition” flights to move prisoners.
“It remains the case that the U.S. authorities have repeated clear and explicit assurances that no prisoners have been transported through Ireland and it remains the case that there is no evidence that any prisoner has been transported through Ireland,” said his spokesman.
However, international human rights lobby groups have refuted the assurances given by the United States Amnesty International has claimed that six CIA-chartered aircraft have landed 50 times at Shannon and made 800 flights into western European airspace.
Amnesty obtained flight records for the planes from September 2001 to September 2005. According to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, over this period, these planes landed 50 times in Shannon and took off 35 times, suggesting that some flights were kept secret. Although Shannon airport is used as a refueling stop for the U.S. military, none of the planes were military transport planes.
The human rights organization claimed that one of the planes that landed in Shannon is known as the “Guantanamo Bay Express,” after making more than 50 trips to the U.S. detention center. It was also used in the CIA rendition of Ahmed Agiza and Mohammed al-Zari from Sweden to Egypt.
It claims that a second plane was used to take Syrian-Canadian national Maher Arar from the United States to Syria where he was detained for 13 months without charge, during which time he was tortured, before being released in October 2003.
