Condoleeza and Dermot: The Liar and the Sucker

Condoleeza Rice's "assurances" to Dermot Ahern in Washington on torture are meaningless. The US has redefined torture and almost certainly Ireland is facilitating torture by allowing CIA rendition flights through Shannon. By Colin Murphy, Sara Burke and Vincent Browne

Dermot Ahern has steadfastly refused to grapple with the central issue on the use of Shannon and other European airports by CIA aircraft in the transport of terror suspects to places of torture in Europe and the Middle East. The issue is the definition of torture. There are signals from within the US Administration that the US is returning to a narrow definition of torture, which is in conflict with the definitions under international law (see panel on "Definition of Torture").

Whether this refusal is because of an obtuseness on the part of the Minister for Foreign Affairs (as evidenced in his previous exploratory efforts to discover from JMSE in June 1997 whether they had paid money to Ray Burke eight years previously) or whether this is a deliberate strategy on the part of the Minister to confuse the issue and, thereby, the Irish public is not clear.

But the evidence that Shannon is being used as part of the "rendition" operation by the CIA to transport suspects to centres in Europe and the Middle East is stark as repeatedly reported in Village over the last several months.

Village has documented a number of instances of US prisoners being "rendered" (ie kidnapped and transported) and subsequently alleging they were tortured. A Swedish parliamentary inquiry found the treatment of two men transferred from Stockholm to Egypt by the CIA to be "inhuman". Swedish diplomats who visited the men in Cairo reported in a confidential memo details of the torture they had been subjected to.

A British man, Binyam Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan and subsequently transferred to Morocco and then to Guantanamo by the US, where he is still in detention (and is represented by a lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith), detailed the torture he was subjected to while in Morocco. His account of the prison he was held in in Rabat corresponds to the Temara torture centre identified in a 2004 report by Human Rights Watch.

Mohammed's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, has said: "This is outsourcing of torture, plain and simple. America knows torture is wrong but gets others to do its unconscionable dirty work."

Tim Hourigan, a peace activist who monitors flights through Shannon, handed in a lengthy and detailed written complaint to gardai at Shannon on 2 October 2004. He alleged that crimes were occurring at Shannon including "aiding and abetting torture and unlawful detention by means of facilitating unlawful landing at Shannon airport of an aircraft known to be used in the transport of people taken without charge or trial to a place of torture and unlawful detention for an indefinite period of time".

He substantiated this by stating that a Gulfstream jet with the registration number N379P (see accompanying article) had been recorded landing at Shannon on a number of occasions and that this jet had been documented as being involved in renditions.

The particular instance of rendition on N379P which he stated involved the transfer of two Egyptians from Stockholm to Cairo, where they claimed they were subsequently tortured. This case was subsequently confirmed in a Swedish parliamentary investigation and a report by the Swedish parliamentary ombudsman. The role of the CIA and the N379P in the rendition was confirmed, and the report found the treatment of the two prisoners to be "inhuman".

It is now known, as reported in Village in September, that this plane flew through Shannon when returning from another rendition mission, the transfer of Binyam Mohammed from Pakistan to Morocco, on 22-23 July 2002. The Department of Transport has confirmed this plane has landed at Shannon 13 times since 2000. The plane has made over 50 trips to Guantanamo, according to Amnesty International.

Amnesty international has said the assurances offered by Condoleezza Rice are "meaningless". Claudio Cordone of Amnesty said on Monday 5 December: "Flying detainees to countries where they may face torture or other ill-treatment is a direct and outright breach on international law with or without so called 'diplomatic assurances'. These assurances are meaningless. Countries known for systematic torture, regularly deny the existence of such practices."

Last year, the US transferred a number of Chechnyan prisoner from Guantanamo to Russia. When the Red Cross expressed concerns about the safety of this, the State Department's legal adviser, William Taft, said the US had obtained "assurances from senior Russian authorities that the detainees will be treated humanely in accordance with Russian law and obligations". Yet the State Department's 2003 country report for Russia noted "credible reports that law enforcement personnel frequently engaged in torture, violence, and other brutal or humiliating treatment and often did so with impunity".