US:THE AIRCRAFT that took a Saudi-born man from Baghdad to Kabul where he was held without charge at a secret CIA prison had refuelled at Shannon airport the day before, according to flight records collated by Amnesty International as part of a report into the CIA's programme of secret detentions and enforced disappearances.
The report is based on research and interviews the human rights organisation carried out with Khaled al-Maqtari, who spent more than 2½ years in secret CIA detention centres known as "black sites".
Mr al-Maqtari, who had lived most of his life in Yemen before moving to Iraq in early 2003, was detained by US forces in Fallujah in January 2004. He was transferred to Abu Ghraib prison as an unregistered "ghost detainee".
While there, he says, he was subjected by American and British interrogators to repeated beatings, sleep deprivation and induced hypothermia. On one occasion he was suspended by his feet, with his arms tied behind his back, and a pulley was used to lower him up and down while he was beaten by guards.
After nine days in Abu Ghraib, Mr al-Maqtari says he was taken by aircraft to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan, were he was held for a further three months. Amnesty International says it has obtained flight records that corroborate Mr al-Maqtari's recollections, to the extent that a Gulfstream V jet, operated by a CIA front company, departed from Baghdad International Airport on January 21st, nine days after his arrival in Abu Ghraib. The jet, one of the aircraft most frequently identified with known cases of rendition, flew on to Khwaja Rawash airport in Kabul.
"This same jet, registered at the time as N379P, had left Shannon airport on January 20th, 2004, en route to Baghdad where it collected Mr al-Maqtari," said Colm O'Gorman, executive director of Amnesty International's Irish section.
"In essence, Shannon was used as a refuelling stop by the individuals who 'disappeared' Mr al-Maqtari to Kabul. It is clear that Ireland serves as a staging area for these kinds of operations, which constitute some of the worst kinds of human rights abuses.
"We are calling for the Irish Government to live up to its obligations under international law and put in place a robust system of monitoring the use of Shannon by planes known, or suspected, to be part of the US government's renditions programme."
Mr O'Gorman said recent revelations that US aircraft on so-called "extraordinary rendition" flights had twice stopped over on British territory with prisoners aboard, despite US assurances to the contrary, should be of grave concern to the Irish Government as it has received similar assurances with regard to Shannon.
"There can no longer be any doubt that Shannon is being used by those involved in kidnapping and torture, dressed up as part of a war on terror," he said.
"Ireland's core values of respect for human rights and the dignity of the person are put at risk by our continued failure to ensure that we are not complicit in these crimes."
Mr al-Maqtari says he was subjected to further ill-treatment in Afghanistan, including prolonged solitary confinement, beatings, sleep deprivation, prolonged shackling and sensory deprivation.
In April 2004 he and a number of his fellow detainees were transferred to another CIA "black site", which Amnesty International says may have been in eastern Europe.
He was detained there for a further 28 months, before being sent back to Yemen where he was held until May 2007.
"At no point during his 32-month confinement was Khaled al-Maqtari told where he was or why. He did not have access to lawyers, relatives, the International Committee of the Red Cross or any person other than his interrogators and the personnel involved in his detention and transfer," said Anne FitzGerald, a senior adviser at Amnesty International who interviewed Mr al-Maqtari for the report. The report notes that Mr al-Maqtari, now 31, received no reparation from US authorities, who have yet to acknowledge his detention.