Torture, bombs and killers pass through Shannon

international | crime and justice | news report Wednesday March 09, 2005 22:11 by Edward Horgan - Citizen of Ireland

Ireland's participation in Human Rights Abuses: A case to answer?

Abuse of human rights is serious. It sometimes happens when undemocratic regimes feel threated by freedom movements. It is happening in the so-called war on terror because democratic US is seeking to maintain its access to an undue share of the world’s limited energy resources. Ireland is facilitating this torture process, and the even worse large-scale killing of innocent people in Iraq, by facilitating the US military transit through Shannon and the transport of prisoners for torture. Ireland’s reasons for this complicity amount to the worst of all reasons, just money.

Vulture on the wing?

Irish Government agents move to suppress civil liberties and exposure of truth at Shannon.

Following my arrest at Shannon by both Airport Police and Gardai, on Friday 4th March, my binoculars and camera were impounded. I went back to Shannon on Sunday with Tim and witnessed three troop-carrying chartered aircraft in the space of less that one hour. On a further visit on Tuesday I witnessed one Gulfstream taking off and a futher one landing. Because I did not have my binoculars or camera, it was necessary for me to get out of my car in order to attempt identification of this aircraft. However, I was approached by a plain-clothes special branch detective garda, who immediately told me who I was, unlike AP Inspector Martin on Friday last, and ordered me to leave. When I hesitated he told me I would be arrested if I did not leave immediately.

Meanwhile, US troops are passing through Shannon in large numbers daily. A French TV crew arrived on Wednesday 9th and got some good footage of US troops within the terminal building at Shannon. They are over to do a programme on Irish neutrality, and have been simply gob-smacked at what is going on at Shannon.
Attached is a recent photos of a US warplane at Shannon, in case anyone might think they had “gone away you know”. These photos were taken recently at an airport near you. Meanwhile democracy and freedom are little nearer in Iraq, except for the freedom in death for 100,000 innocent people. Civil war in Iraq is historically unprecedented, but is being provoked by the US-led occupation in clasis divide and rule strategy.
In Lebanon, George Bush calls for the withdrawal of the 40,000 Syrian troops, but makes no mention of the withdrawal of 150,000 US troops from Iraq. Lebanon is just recovering from a dreadful civil war, instigaged by Israel, who activley supprted and even led the Christian Militia. Now civil war may be looming again, sparked off by fears of US and Israeli interference. The US first intervened in Lebanon in 1958 and has still not learned the lessons of history.

"By now it should be clear that decades of excusing and accommodating tyranny in the pursuit of stability have only led to injustice and instability and tragedy," Mr. Bush said on Tuesday 8th March.
Yes, Mr Bush, so please get out of all those countries you are occupying in part or in whole. Stop inflicting tyranny, injustice, instability and tragedy on millions of innocent people.
Almost 3,000 innocent people died in the attacks on the US in Sept 2001, 3000 tragedies. At least twice that number were killed in US revenge attacks on Afghanistan. So far over 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed even though there was no Iraqi involvement in the attacks on the US, no weapons of mass destruction, and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein had been supported for years by the US. How come one American life comes to be equated to over 300 Muslim or Arab lives? A similar proportionality is revealed with the casualty rate in Iraq, 1400 US lives for 100,000 Iraqis, amounts to wholesale unjustified slaughter, not military combat.
Justice and truth are the values we in Ireland should be espousing, and our Irish national interests are best served by insisting on justice for all our neighbours. Humankind is now our neighbourhood.

There is an institution in Europe called the European Court of Human Rights. A case now needs to be prepared to establish if Ireland has a case to answer before the European Court of Human Rights over its failure to prevent the use of its airports and facilities for the purposes of transporting prisoners for torture by another state. If the health scandal is anything to go by, it will not be politicians’ heads that will roll, but the government’s agents, and civil servants.