The Irish Human Rights Commission, speaking today to the European Parliament's Inquiry into Extraordinary Rendition by the CIA, made it clear that irrespective of whether or not prisoners were on board the CIA flights which landed at Irish airports, that the Irish Government has a responsibility under the UN Convention Against Torture and the European Convention on Human Rights to actively ensure that Irish territory was not used as part of the rendition circuit. They made it clear that reliance on `diplomatic assurances' is not an adequate protection.

"It is an established fact that Mr. Abu Omar was kidnapped in Italy and transferred to Egypt by the CIA where he is reportedly still detained and tortured. The very plane used in that kidnap operation, known as the `Guantanamo Express', stopped-over, presumably to refuel, at Shannon airport on 18 February 2003. It was returning to Washington directly from the rendition of Abu Omar. That clearly makes Ireland an accomplice to that illegal operation.

"According to Euro-control records, provided to the European parliament, there have been 147 stopovers by CIA operated planes in Ireland. We don't know how many of these were engaged in activities contrary to International law; we don't know who the crews were, or if there were passengers, or if they were carrying cargo and if so what kind of cargo. We don't know any of this quite simply because the Irish government has refused to seek such information or to put in place an inspection procedure as a preventative measure.

The Minister for Foreign affairs, Mr. Dermot Ahern, will be facing these and similar questions on Thursday next (30/11/06). He will have to explain why the Irish government has refused to accept the advice of the IHRC to put in place a system of random inspections of CIA flights into Ireland in order to be fully compliant with our international obligations and to prevent, insofar as we can, the rendition of prisoners to countries were they will be tortured.