The Frightened Ostrich Approach to Torture

"Amnesty International has revealed that six planes used by the CIA for renditions have made some 800 flights in or out of European airspace including 50 landings at Shannon airport in the Republic of Ireland."

It is abundantly clear that a full and transparent government investigation into the use of Shannon by CIA planes is needed. Amnesty International has rejected the claim by Condaleesa Rice that 'rendition' is permissable under international law'. So far the American secretary of state has only denied that prisoners were being transported so as to be tortured, not that 'rendition', the transfering of prisoners without legal process, was taking place. Rice has argued that rendition is a necessary tool in the War on Terror.

"The argument makes no sense unless there is an assumption that the purpose of rendition is to send people to a place where things could be done to them that could not be done in the United States," said David Luban, a law professor at Georgetown University

"Ireland has not, and will not, facilitate the torture of prisoners by any state, and any use of torture, wherever occurring, would be wrong and deeply reprehensible," said the Taoiseach.

Yet despite the Taoiseach's comments, the government is effectively sticking its head in the sand by accepting American assurances at face value. Even if the planes are only using shannon for refuelling purposes and have no prisoners on board, if those planes go on to perform rendition activities in other countries we have to accept some degree of culpability for letting them pass through unchecked.

The American definition of torture has been steadily narrowing to allow more and more of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" techniques, including waterboarding, stress positions, sensory deprivation and so on. Alberto Gonzales' leaked Justice Department memo from 2002 defines it like so:

"torture is only torture when it involves physical pain equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious injury such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death".

US ambassador to Ireland John Kenny has been invited to appear before an Oireachtas commitee and discuss the alleged transportation of prisoners. Commenting on the allegations, Professor William Schabas of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUIG said in the Irish Times today that the Irish government had a duty to guarantee that people are not transported through Shannon for torture elsewhere, or else "it has a duty to tell the Americans that they cannot land, and that they should go somewhere else."