American Gulag

Willfully ignoring crimes against humanity again

Published on May 27, 2025Leave a comment

As American planes are renditioning people to South Sudan via Ireland, Simon McGarr is reminded of the last time the country deliberately looked away from crimes against humanity:

We have been here before, of course. Here’s the 2007 Irish Human Rights Commission’s report on Ireland’s role in the George W Bush era of extraordinary renditions of individuals for the purposes of torture abroad. This was expanded upon by the Open Society’s Justice Initiative’s 2013 report “GLOBALIZING TORTURE: CIA SECRET DETENTION AND EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION“, which determined that Ireland had “facilitated” the CIA rendition and torture project.

Furthermore, the question of planes landing in Shannon and flying on to Israel has also triggered questions as to whether Ireland is being used as a refuelling stop in the delivery of arms to Israel’s government while it prosecutes its military action against the people of Gaza.

The reason that these are still only questions- as yet unanswered- is that the government declines to have officials inspect the planes which land. Indeed, An Garda Síochana seem as determined as they were in the Bush era to place the level of evidence required to trigger an examination of what might be on one of these planes so high that it would be impossible for any member of the public to meet it. The view taken then was that police would only inspect US planes if a member of the public could already prove that there were prisoners (or arms shipments or even undeclared restricted items such as guns) on board.

It’s not surprising that the Irish government would rather look away than confront either the US or Israel. Better to tolerate this than to dire the wrath of either country, would be the thought. Few European governments would choose to do otherwise. How then, could you force them to do so anyway? As McGarr outlines, maybe you need to use VAT law:

A few months ago Lelia Doolan assessed the legal situation regarding the treatment of planes used by the US government stopping at Shannon.

She wrote to the Attorney General to put him on notice that she had concerns that Ireland was not complying with its duties of systemic inspection of planes for cargo under EU VAT law.

A clever tactic which might work but I’m doubtful it will. Perhaps the only way to stop these renditions is to do on a massive scale what people have done with success to prevent immigration arrests in the UK, by surrounding the arresting officers and physically keeping them from taking somebody away.

We’re Still Torturing Prisoners At Guantanamo

Published on April 15, 2013Leave a comment

Prisoners on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay (and wasn’t that supposed to have been clsoed during Obama’s first term) are being tortured through force feeding:

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

I know something about what having a feeding tube put into you can feel like, even in the best of circumstances, because Sandra had to had one a couple of times during her long illnesses. She hated those things, had had bad experiences with them before to the point of suffering panic attacks just by the thought she had to have one again. Don’t forget that these are tubes that have to be shoved down your nose, through your throat into your stomach, then have to be kept in there for as long as you need feeding that way. Even when you undergo it voluntarily, knowing why you need it, it’s uncomfortable and painful at best. When it’s done involuntarily, against your wishes? That’s torture.

(Title and story from Unfogged.)

Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side – Clive Stafford Smith

Published on August 17, 2008

Cover of Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side

Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side
Clive Stafford Smith
307 pages including index
published in 2007

Lord knowns there have been a lot of depressing books published about America’s war on terror; not to mention a metric shitload of blogs writing about it, including my own. So what good is yet another book decrying the injustices committed at Guantanamo Bay? After all, if you don’t know about them by now, you’ll never know. But when the author is one of the lawyer volunteers defending the victims of the war on terror, who has been coming to Guantanamo for years and who also manages to inject some humour in what’s otherwise a bloody dreary subject.

Clive Stafford Smith is somebody who has a lot of experience with worthwhile but hopeless causes, as he spent years working on death penalty cases in the American Deep South. When the news about the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp became known he didn’t hesitate, but immediately got involved. Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side is based on his personal experiences at Guantanamo. The title is a reference to the fact that all the lawyers have to stay on the leeward side of the bay and therefore have to take the morning ferry to get to their clients each day. Surprisingly for a book on such a dark subject matter, Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side is quite funny in places, due to the absurdity of some of the situations Clive Stafford Smith and his clients find themselves in.

CIA flights via Schiphol?

Published on December 2, 2005

Last week, the Volkskrant reported (link in Dutch) that an alleged CIA plane had been stationed on Schiphol for two days, on 17 and 18 November, before leaving for Rekjavik. The plane in question is a DHC-8 or “Dash-8” plane, with registration number N505LL and owned by the Path Corporation, allegedly a CIA front.

picture of the DHC-8 N505LL taken in Afghanistan in 2002
The airplane in question, photographed in afghanistan in 2002

On the Spyflight website, the same plane that visited Schiphol two weeks ago is identified as having been stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan. According to Spyflight it is “used to transport US SF personnel around the country to various small airstrips”.

So what was it doing at Schiphol? This report says it had arrived from Istanbul and had previously visited Baku, in Azerbaijan, which could point at its origin indeed being Afghanistan. It wasn’t supposed to have any passengers when it landed at Istanbul, but that information could be wrong. All of this might very well be benign, but could also fit the extraction and movement of prisoners from Afghanistan to parts unknown…

CIA admits it has secret prisons in Eastern Europe

Published on November 30, 2005

Current CIA director Porter Goss admitted in the Washington Post yesterday that the CIA does indeed have a secret prison system outside the USA, including on locations in Eastern Europe:

Goss did not deny the existence — reported earlier this month by The Washington Post — of a secret CIA prison system overseas that has included sites in Eastern Europe. Asked why the United States needed secret prisons, Goss said: “We’re fighting a war on terror. We’re doing quite well in it. Inevitably, we are going to have to capture some terrorists, and inevitably, they are going to have to have some due process, and inevitably, that is going to happen, and it’s going to be done lawfully and under all of the law and order and protections of due process that this country affords.”

In the same article, Condi Rice is also quoted, displaying the same historical insight and intelligence that made her Secretary of State:

In an interview published today in USA Today, Rice indicated she intends to remind Europeans that “we are fighting a war on terror” and that the United States must take certain actions “in order to protect not just ourselves but to protect others.”

She added: “We haven’t ever fought a war like this before. We’ve never fought a war before . . . where you can’t allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them, because if they commit the crime, then thousands of innocent people die.”

Meanwhile, the European Union is less than happy with this situation, as it is hinted that one of the countries in which these prisons are located is a memberstate (Poland) and one is a candidate member state (Romania). So unhappy in fact, it’s threatening sanctions against any memberstate involved in this:

Franco Frattini, the European commissioner for justice and home affairs, warned that any countries found to be allowing the CIA to operate the detention centres – part of a global secret gulag used to hold al-Qa’ida suspects and other “ghost detainees” – could have its voting rights suspended.

It’s uncertain how real these threats are, but Romania at the very least could see itself stuck outside the EU for considerably longer than otherwise would’ve been the case. Smartarses can of course wonder what exactly the difference is between these CIA prisons and something like Belmarsh Prison… Poland could at least strike back by demanding inquiries into which EU countries participated in extraordinary rendition.

Meanwhile, closer at home, all the furore about how exactly the US is treating its detainees has caused problems for the Dutch government. Dutch forces are still active in Afghanistan as part of the peace force there and the Netherlands has been asked to extend its mission for at least another two years, to form part of a stablisation force in the province of Uruzgan, not the most safe of provinces. Already wary of becoming embroiled in internal Afghan conflicts, which may lead to numerous Dutch casualties and resulting political fallout, parliament has also become wary of the American treatment of Afghani prisoners.

And not just parliament. The minister of Foreign Affairs, who had earlier said he thought the war on Iraq was a “mistake”, also has his doubts about this. Granted, for many parliamentaries the risk of Dutch casualties will be the main reason to vote against extending the Dutch mission in Afghanistan, but at the very least the concern about American treatment of prisoners will make a good excuse to refuse.