The Council of Europe has accused 14 member states of "intentional or grossly negligent collusion" in allowing the United States to set up "a global spider's web of secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers" for terrorism suspects, write Lara Marlowe in Paris, Liam Reid and Jamie Smyth
Ireland is among the countries named in the report by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, published yesterday. Ireland falls under the category of "negligent collusion" for allowing Shannon airport to be used as a stopover point for CIA flights on "rendition" operations.
"Shannon is involved in an indirect fashion," said Dick Marty, the Swiss senator who has spent the past six months drawing up the report. "Planes landed at Shannon after rendition operations, when they no longer had detainees on board."
Mr Marty criticised Ireland for blindly accepting US assurances rather than investigating the role of aircraft using Shannon. The attitude of the Government was, "Our conscience is clean. If the US says everything is okay, then everything is okay," he said.
Chairman of the Human Rights Commission, Dr Maurice Manning, called for an urgent investigation last night. He said a new inspection and monitoring system for US military and CIA flights which stop over in Ireland is needed. "The only effective way of ensuring that we do not become complicit in dispatching people to be tortured or ill-treated is through establishing an effective regime of monitoring and inspection," he said.
His calls were echoed by Fine Gael, Labour and the Green Party, who all called for a new flight inspection system.
However, the Government has indicated it does not intend to take any action in the wake of the report.
A spokeswoman said the Government "absolutely rejects" suggestions made in the report that the State could have colluded with renditions. She said the Taoiseach had received an explicit personal assurance from US president George Bush that prisoners were not being transported through Shannon.
However, Dr Manning said that the only diplomatic assurances that could meet our constitutional and international human rights obligations "would be ones which were fully legally enforceable".
"The possibility raised in the report that Ireland could be held responsible for active or passive collusion is sufficiently grave to require further urgent investigation by the Irish authorities," he said.
Speaking in Luxembourg, Minister for Finance Brian Cowen said: "We have made it very clear we didn't willing or unwillingly aid any renditions. I don't accept we were involved in any renditions whatsoever and we have assurances to that effect that we find satisfactory."