Rights group Amnesty pressed Ireland on Tuesday over suspected CIA rendition flights through airports including transatlantic stopoff Shannon, after the United States ordered a probe into alleged abuse.
Amnesty International’s Irish branch urged Dublin to complete a legal review, after a report said interrogators at secret CIA prisons threatened to kill the children of September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Other detainees were threatened with the rape of family members, execution, shooting and torture, prompting US Attorney General Eric Holder to name a prosecutor to probe alleged CIA prisoner abuse.
Irish Amnesty’s executive director Colm O’Gorman said the fresh revelations show just how much the world did not know about the Bush administration’s illegal actions.
“For Ireland this raises again the policy of the Irish government to rely on denials from the US government that Shannon [airport] was used to transport prisoners.
“Similar assurances the US government gave Ireland, and the world, that it was not involved in torture are looking increasingly threadbare.”
Shannon, the first airport across the North Atlantic from the US, is an important refuelling stop for US military planes. Thousands of US troops have passed through the airport going to and from the Iraq war.
O’Gorman said the Irish government “does not, and did not, know what went through Ireland’s airports on secret CIA flights”.
“CIA planes illegally claimed to be civilian aircraft while travelling through our airspace and using Shannon airport. The Irish government has never investigated this.
“Our government does not know because it chooses not to know.”
O’Gorman said it was now almost a year since a special Cabinet sub-committee was set up to review the law on searching suspected rendition flights.
“There has been little, if any, progress,” said O’Gorman, who called on Prime Minister Brian Cowen to say when the review will take place, to ensure it is comprehensive and to commit to making the findings public. — AFP