Extraordinary Rendition & Gulfstream N379P???
The Sunday Times - Ireland
October 03, 2004
Scott Millar
WILLIE O’DEA has said that one of his first actions as Ireland’s new minister for defence will be to investigate allegations that the American secret service has been illegally transporting prisoners through Shannon airport.
The Limerick TD said that initial inquiries by the Department of Foreign Affairs have concluded that terrorist suspects are not being transported through the airport, and this was the government position.
But O’Dea added: “I will make absolutely thorough inquiries next week, as soon as people come back to their desks, to make sure this isn’t the case because I would be extremely disturbed if it were, and I have to say I would find it totally unacceptable.
“Indeed, this is a matter I will be raising with my colleagues in cabinet and I would be looking for a situation where this sort of facility wouldn’t be allowed.”
The defence minister said that anybody on Irish soil is entitled to the protection provided by the Irish constitution. “I will be suggesting to the Irish government that they wouldn’t countenance any such activity, no matter how friendly the country in question was,” he said.
“Personally I would be horrified to think that Shannon is being used for this sort of activity (illegally transferring detainees). I would be totally opposed to it. And if this is happening I will do my utmost to put a stop to it straight away.”
In his first interview since his appointment last Wednesday, the minister also promised to ensure that all weaponry being transported through Shannon airport is checked by the Irish authorities.
The minister’s comments follow growing disquiet over reported landings of a privately hired Gulfstream jet at Shannon. The plane has been linked by the Swedish government to a clandestine American operation to transfer military prisoners to and from detention centres around the globe.
The plane, call sign N379P, has been spotted on several occasions by peace campaigners camped at Shannon airport since early last year.
It first came to international attention when Swedish television documentary makers, who were investigating the disappearance of two Arab asylum seekers from their country, found they had been transported by American agents by plane to Egypt, where they were allegedly tortured.
Following pressure from the Swedish government, one of the men was released without charge and the other has been sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment. The Swedish investigation found that the plane’s flight path regularly originated in North Carolina. It proceeded to Dallas where it picked up American intelligence agents and flew to Europe after which it made stop-offs in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, Israel, Egypt and Afghanistan. The plane has also visited the American military base and prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Earlier this year Seymour Hersh, an American journalist, uncovered the workings of a secret American military operation known as Extraordinary Rendition, in which the plane is believed to play a role.
The operation is said to involve the transport of “high value” prisoners around the world. Believed to be authorised by Donald Rumsfeld, the American secretary of defence, the movement of prisoners from one jurisdiction to the other allows them to be subjected to “interrogation methods” that may be illegal in other countries.....................
Fact or fiction or a bit of both ???????