Ban on CIA’s ‘Guantanamo Express’ from Irish airports

Ann Cahill

The plane sometimes referred to as the ‘Guantanamo Express’, used by the CIA to transport kidnapped suspects to secret jails, has been banned from landing at Irish airports in future, Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern told a European Parliament committee.

The plane landed at Shannon after taking Abu Omar from Germany to Egypt on February 17, 2003, where he is still being held incommunicado and tortured, according to the committee’s report.

However, Mr Ahern refused to hold an independent investigation into the use of Shannon and other airports by CIA rendition planes, saying he relied on assurances he received from the Bush administration.

He said he raised the issue with the US in 2004, a year before the Washington Post exposed the renditions and secret jails.

“The United States has stated authoritatively to us that prisoners have not been transferred through Irish territory, nor would they be without our permission,” he said.

These assurances were not legally binding and had not been got in writing, but they were noted at the time, he said.

He was the second EU government minister to give evidence to the European Parliament’s temporary committee investigating the use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners.

Over two hours of often bad-tempered questioning and answers, he told MEPs the Government had no power to inspect flights landing at Irish airports, as this was the job of the gardaí.

Afterwards, furious MEPs insisted the evidence showed that the ‘Guantanamo Express’ stopped over at Shannon directly after the so-called rendition.

“It is indisputable that it landed at Shannon en route,” said Proinsias De Rossa, Dublin MEP and a member of the committee.

“There were clearly 147 suspect flights through Ireland.”