Road to Guantanamo

by Caitlin - Code Pink Ireland Wed Apr 05, 2006 23:34 codepinkireland at gmail dot com

I wonder if these sorts of articles in the MSM will begin to sink into the consciousness of the mainstream population?

I wish I could've attended this event, and I hope a full report will be forthcoming.

~~snip~~

IRELAND: Four aircraft believed to have been chartered by the CIA landed and took off on 81 separate occasions from Shannon and Dublin airports in the past five years, Amnesty International has claimed.

In a report to be published today, the organisation claims the four aircraft passed through Shannon 78 times and Dublin on three occasions since 2001. The same aircraft used Belfast's international and Derry airports five times in the same period.

One of the aircraft, which has passed through all four Irish airports - a Gulfstream jet that can carry up to 19 people - has made over 100 trips to Guantánamo Bay in the same period, according to the report.

All four aircraft "are known to have rendered prisoners to illegal detention and torture," an Amnesty spokesman said.

"With renditions shrouded in secrecy, it is extremely difficult to gauge the true extent of its operation, though is likely to involve hundreds of detainees, dozens of planes and thousands of flights," he added.

Tracing the worldwide movements of the four aircraft over a five-year period, the report lists almost 1,000 flights it alleges are "directly linked" to the CIA through "front" companies, as well as 600 CIA flights by aircraft leased from US aviation companies.

The report, Below the Radar: Secret Flights to Torture and "Disappearance", cites a number of individual cases where detainees were abducted or handed over to US officials before being "disappeared". The cited testimony of three Yemeni men - Muhammad al-Assad, Muhammad Bashmilah and Sala Qaru - describes their detention for more than a year at a suspected "black site".

After cross-referencing prayer-schedule data, daylight-saving time practice, the position of the sun and flight times, Amnesty believes the likely location of the prison to be Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Macedonia, Albania, Georgia or Azerbaijan.

The men were held in isolation, constantly monitored and permanently shackled to a ring fixed in the floor of their cells, according to the report.

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Oh, Ireland, have you no shame?

by Judge Dredd Wed Apr 05, 2006 23:36

The Anglo-American establishment were always great fellows for a bit of torture .....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1745489,00.html