Staff working at Shannon Airport are being pressed to report any evidence they see of trafficking of prisoners by the US military.
It follows the discovery by a cleaner last Sunday of a manacled soldier on board a US civilian aircraft at the airport. The incident has proved highly embarrassing for the Irish government, which had always accepted assurances that no such traffic passed through its airports.
Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern has now signalled that gardai may carry out random checks of US planes using the airport, but in the absence of any concrete decision human rights groups have asked staff at Shannon to report anything out of the ordinary. |