Information on Shannon Rendition Flights Requested from Irish Government

national | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Tuesday September 02, 2008 09:30 by John Lannon

A UK-based human rights organisation have asked the Irish government for information on two specific rendition flights that stopped in Shannon. The first was a flight on July 22nd, 2002 which rendered Binyam Mohamed to torture in Morocco. The second stopped in Shannon on September 17th, 2004, en route to rendering Mr Mohammed from Rabat, Morocco to Kabul, Afghanistan.

CIA-linked planes like this one are regular visitors to Shannon

The request for information on the rendition flights was sent to the Taoiseach Brian Cowan on Friday last by lawyers representing Binyam Mohamed. Mr Mohamed is a UK resident who was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and is being held in Guantánamo Bay. He has been tortured in Pakistan, Morocco, Afghanistan and Guantanamo by US agents and their accomplices, and is now being charged before a US Military Commission with terrorist offences that carry the death penalty.

The request is for information on the flights that brought Binyam Mohammed from one torture chamber to the next was made by his lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith who works with the human rights organisation Reprieve. It was made under the Freedom of Information Act and it follows a previous request for information about flights alleged to have been involved in Mr Mohamed’s rendition, made to the Taoiseach at the beginning of August.

According to today's Irish Times, the Taoiseach's private secretary responded to the first request “on an interim basis”, stating the Government’s opposition to the “appalling practice of so-called extraordinary rendition”. The letter also stated that the Government had received categoric assurances that no rendition had taken place through Ireland, and that no evidence had been produced that any individual had been subject to extraordinary rendition through Ireland. In response, Mr Stafford Smith said he was not arguing that any prisoners were rendered through Irish territory, but that CIA aircraft and crew criminally implicated in rendition to torture stopped on Irish territory en route to and from their illegal missions.

“Even if prisoners were not transported directly through Irish territory,” he said, “the movements and activities of these agents must be investigated, as should how Irish authorities came to be complicit in these activities.”

Clive Stafford-Smith's comments echo the calls of organisations and activists in Ireland for investigation of the many known CIA-linked planes landing in Shannon. Hundreds of prisoners like Binyam Mohamed are still being detained in Guantanamo; there are thousands more being held in secret prisons around the world as part of the War on Terror. And it is still likely that Ireland is complicit in their illegal detention and brutal torture.

The information sought from the Irish Government includes records of the flights of July 22nd 2002 and September 17th, 2004, the names and passport details of all those on board, and the name of the hotel where they stayed. Records of the hotel, including telephone records, have also been sought as have records surrounding the flight, including documents filed by US representatives and private corporations involved in the planning of the trips.

The Irish Times report is available at http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0902/1....html.

The appalling torture and injustice faced by Binyam Mohamed and other prisoners is described in Clive Stafford-Smith's book 'Bad Men - Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons' (paperback edition published in 2008 by Phoenix).