On Clare Daly & Mick Wallace entering Shannon airport to US inspect warplanes

This sequence of photos shows Clare Daly & Mick Wallace entering Shannon airport yesterday (22 July) to attempt to inspect the military planes that are clearly visible on the runway. They had been challenged to supply evidence of military flights transporting prisoners or munitions by former Justice Minister Alan Shatter when they attempted to raise the issue in the Dail.

 

This sequence of photos shows Clare Daly & Mick Wallace entering Shannon airport yesterday (22 July) to attempt to inspect the military planes that are clearly visible on the runway. They had been challenged to supply evidence of military flights transporting prisoners or munitions by former Justice Minister Alan Shatter when they attempted to raise the issue in the Dail.

 

Shatter was of course just laughing at them (and indeed the rest of us) safe in the knowledge that the Garda and Army at Shannon have not only been told not to carry out such inspections but to intercept and prevent anyone who tries to carry one out. Tens of thousands of war bound US troops fly through Shannon every year and it has also been used for CIA torture flights.

The Irish state not only turns a blind eye to this activity, it prevents it being exposed and when it is raised, even in the Dail, it sniggers at those who raise it. Every party that has been in power over the last decade has done this, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour Party and the Green Party. It adds up to yet another indication of the contempt politicians have for the people.


 The previous day I had written

TD’s Clare Daly and Mick Wallace were arrested on the tarmac in Shannon airport this morning where they had gone to inspect a US military Hercules C-130 and Boeing 733. Tens of thousands of war bound US troops fly through Shannon every year and it has also been used for CIA torture flights

RTE web have simply reported that they were arrested for "trespass and interfering with aircraft." No mention at all that these were foreign military flights.

According to the Limerick Post
Ed Horgan said
“Part of the reason that they came to Shannon and demanded to inspect the aircraft was that the former Justice Minister Alan Shatter had told them that they should produce evidence of claims that the military flights are transporting prisoners and munitions.”

WORDS Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )