EU:THE GOVERNMENT has faced renewed calls to inspect US military aircraft using Ireland as a transit point to ensure they are not involved in rendition after Amnesty International claimed that a suspect was transported from Iraq to Afghanistan on an aircraft that had refuelled at Shannon the day before.
The human rights group says its interviews with Saudi-born Khaled al-Maqtari and research into flight records leads it to believe that the aircraft that took him from Baghdad to Kabul in January 2004 had left Shannon the previous day.
Mr al-Maqtari, who moved from his home in Yemen to Iraq in early 2003, was detained by US forces in Falluja the following January. His reasons for travelling to Iraq just before the US invasion remain unclear as do the reasons for his subsequent sojourns in Ramadi, Mosul and Falluja - cities pivotal to the Sunni insurgency.
Anne FitzGerald, the Amnesty adviser who interviewed Mr al- Maqtari, told The Irish Times she did not ask him why he moved to Iraq or what he was doing there, saying it was not relevant to the case.
Mr al-Maqtari told Amnesty he was subjected to various forms of torture and ill-treatment during his 32-month incarceration, first in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and then in secret detention centres in Afghanistan and another unknown location, possibly in eastern Europe.
Amnesty International's Irish section has called on the Government to introduce a monitoring system at Shannon to check aircraft suspected of being involved in the US government's so-called extraordinary rendition programme.
Labour leader Eamon Gilmore echoed those demands. "The failure to assert our right to check these planes leaves Ireland potentially complicit in the kidnap, detention and torture of people against whom no charges have been proven and who, in many cases, are totally innocent.
"The Government must now insist on the right to inspect aircraft suspected of being involved in rendition.
If, as the United States insists, there are no suspects on these planes, why should they object to this being independently verified by the Irish authorities?", Mr Gilmore asked.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said the Government is "totally opposed" to extraordinary rendition.
"The Government has received specific assurances from the US authorities that no prisoners have been transferred through Irish airports, nor would they be, without our permission," Mr Gilmore added.