Madam, - The publication date of Tom Ward's response to my letter of June 9th was full of irony. Not only was it the 13th, but it was also the day upon which news began to leak out of the transportation of a shackled prisoner through Shannon on a flight being used by the US military.
Now, of course, the person involved was a US soldier, not a rendition prisoner, but the manner of that person's transportation must raise doubts - even in Mr Ward's mind - about US assurances on the purposes being served by planes which stop over at Shannon.
As to the actual content of Mr Ward's letter, of course it is difficult to find hard evidence of clandestine operations being carried out by a superpower intent on concealing that evidence - particularly when the other governments involved, including our own, seem prepared to accept assurances that nothing untoward is going on! In those circumstances the tracking of aircraft logs and flight records, as well as the use of information from journalists and NGOs, seems a reasonable way of building a prime facie case.
Mr Ward is, of course, right that there is no proof that CIA aircraft landing at Shannon actually have terror suspects on board - but then again there is no proof that they do not. The US does not deny carrying out extraordinary renditions by air; and planes have to use airports. It follows that at least some of the airports in some of the countries cited must have been used by those planes when they did have prisoners on board. Some of those planes have, at times, been tracked through Shannon. So, who knows, maybe they did have prisoners on board.
US assurances that they did not now seem worse than useless: had staff at Shannon not happened upon the shackled prisoner I'm sure we would never have heard of that incident either.
Dick Marty did not claim - nor did I - that prisoners were actually on the planes in Shannon, but rather that planes involved in the rendition process used Shannon as a stop-off point on their complex and intricate journeys. As Vincent Browne noted (Opinion, June 14th) even in such circumstances the Government's permitting such planes to use Shannon is on a par with assisting on its way "a car involved in. . .kidnapping".
The Government has expressed strong opposition to extraordinary rendition so surely consistency would suggest equally strong opposition to helping the rendition process.
If Mr Ward is worried that letters like mine might draw the attention of evil-minded men to Ireland, has he forgotten that those same evil-minded men have known all along that Shannon is used as a transit base for US soldiers to and from their deadly military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan - a consideration far more likely to provoke their ire than the protests of people like myself against our governments continued permission of such activities? - Yours etc,
HARRY McCAULEY, Maynooth, Co Kildare.