If Shannon was being used by the CIA for transporting prisoners then the Government would be participating in a war crime as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal after the second World War, prominent anti-war academic Noam Chomsky said last night in Dublin.
Dr Chomsky, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a leading critic of US foreign policy, was responding to questions from the floor after delivering the annual Amnesty International lecture before 2,000 people at the RDS.
There was such demand for places that the organisers said 4,000 people had to be turned down and the Shelbourne Hall had to used to accommodate the crowd. The attendance included poet Seamus Heaney, Labour Party spokesman on foreign affairs Michael D Higgins and artist Robert Ballagh. The task of moderating the occasion was carried out by broadcast journalist Olivia O'Leary.
During the question-and-answer session, Richard Boyd Barrett of the Irish Anti-War Movement pointed out to Dr Chomsky that about 300,000 US troops had gone through Shannon last year "on the way to Iraq", making for a total of some 500,000 since the war began in 2003. He claimed that "about 50-60 of the CIA rendition flights" carrying prisoners had also gone through Shannon in aircraft that, he added, "the Irish Government refused to search".
To widespread applause, Mr Boyd Barrett asked Dr Chomsky if he would agree that, as a result, the Government was complicit with state terrorism, war crimes and breaches of international human rights. Secondly, he asked Dr Chomsky if he would endorse worldwide demonstrations on March 18th-19th for withdrawal of US-led forces from Iraq.
Dr Chomsky responded: "The second one is easier to answer - yes." He said this would mean supporting "the overwhelming majority of the population of Iraq" which, according to recent authoritative opinion polls, wanted an end to the occupation.
Commenting on the Shannon issue, he said: "I can only respond conditionally. I don't know the facts. But if what you say is correct, and if in fact even a part of it is correct, yes, that's participation in what was declared at Nuremberg to be 'the supreme international crime which encompasses within itself all of the evil that follows'. Participation in that is, yes, a crime. And from then on, it's your business."
The US embassy in Dublin has strongly denied that prisoners are being transported through Shannon and, visiting Dublin this week, Republican Congressman James Walsh of New York also said, "it is my understanding they do not come through Ireland".
In an hour-long lecture entitled, The War on Terror, Dr Chomsky strongly condemned the involvement of the Bush administration and its "pillion-rider", the British government, in the Iraqi war which had, in fact, exacerbated the threat of terror.
"Washington planners had been advised, even by their own intelligence agencies, that the invasion was likely to increase the threat of terror. And it did, as their own intelligence agencies confirm."
If reducing the threat of terror were, in fact, a high priority for Washington or London there were ways to proceed, even apart from the "unmentionable idea" of withdrawal from Iraq. A serious counter-terror campaign would begin by "considering the grievances, and where appropriate, addressing them" which gave rise to "Islamic terror".