Edward Horgan Speaks on Irish Government Culpability in Torture

Duke University on demand has posted Edward Horgan's talk at the the Duke University conference, "Weaving a Net of Accountability: Taking on extraordinary rendition at the state and regional level". The conference was held on April 8-10. Dr. Horgan's 10-year visa to enter the United States was withdrawn weeks before he was to attend. Many feel that it was a vindictive move by the U.S. government against a staunch critic of the U.S. policy of extraordinary rendition, and of country's like Ireland, that have cooperated with that policy, which kidnaps suspects and sends them to foreign countries, where many are tortured.

Dr. Horgan is a former Irish Defence Forces officer and co-founder of ShannonWatch, an organization that has protested the use of Shannon Airport for both renditions and U.S. military stopovers for operations aimed at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I reported on the Horgan visa story here and here.



H/T to Stephen Soldz, who was also a speaker at the Duke conference

U.S. Continues to Block Visa for Irish Anti-Renditions Activist

Originally posted at The Seminal/Firedoglake

UPDATE: 8am Wednesday, April 7: I have been told that Dr. Horgan will be able to get his visa! I don’t believe he has it in hand, as I write, but reportedly the promise is there. Apparently, with some quick adjustments with airfare, he should be able to make the Duke conference.

It’s been almost three weeks now since I wrote about the U.S. decision to revoke the visa of prominent Irish anti-renditions activist Edward Horgan, and not much has changed. The revocation came only a month before Dr. Horgan was slated to visit the United States to attend a major conference at Duke University on the battle against the government’s use of extraordinary rendition.

According to conference organizers:

[Scott] Horton’s keynote opens the conference, "Weaving a Net of Accountability: Taking on extraordinary rendition at the state and regional level." Bringing together legal experts, grassroots activists, students and human rights workers, the two-day event explores North Carolina’s role in torture and extraordinary rendition. Participants will discuss setting up a grassroots “commission of inquiry” aimed at creating transparency and accountability.

But it’s looking increasingly like Dr. Horgan, who is the International Secretary of the Irish Peace & Neutrality Alliance , co-founder of the anti-renditions group ShannonWatch, and a well-known Irish activist, as well as former Irish Defense Force officer and election observer for the European Union, will not be able to attend. He was to be a featured speaker at the Duke event. Unless a visa comes through in the next day or two, it will impossible for Horgan to attend. If he can’t be there in person, there are plans to have him speak to attendees via video feed.

Horgan’s group, ShannonWatch, has documented the use of the airport as a stopover for CIA rendition flights (see their page documenting such flights).

According to my sources, Dr. Horgan has the support of personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Dublin. But it appears the U.S. State Department and Department of Homeland Security back in Washington D.C. have slowed down the process to ensure that Horgan, a respected peace activist and retired Commandant with the Irish Defence Forces, cannot speak face to face with Americans, and meet with his associates in the international anti-renditions, anti-torture movement.

Dr. Horgan told the Irish Times back on March 20, “What has happened to me is an indication that anyone who dares criticise US foreign policy will have difficulty getting into the country."

As I wrote back on March 16:

It seems reasonable to assume, lacking any other evidence, that Horgan is being politically targeted by the Obama administration. This is the kind of behavior we came to expect in the days of Bush and Cheney. But it goes with the territory. Barack Obama decided in the first weeks of his administration to maintain the previous administration’s rendition program, complete with fig-leaf assurances that U.S. authorities would receive no-harm promises from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and other rendition destination sites known for wide-spread use of torture. No human rights organization believes that promise, and U.S. State Department Human Rights Country Reports have strongly criticized many of these countries for their use of torture, arbitrary detention and prison conditions.

Meanwhile, Horgan’s plight has gotten some coverage back in Ireland. From Eithne Tynan in yesterday’s Sunday Tribune:

What an interesting coincidence, then, that in the very same week in which Obama was acknowledging our plucky commitment to the American war effort, Horgan’s 10-year US visa was unexpectedly revoked. Horgan had been due to speak at a conference against torture and extraordinary rendition at Duke University in North Carolina next month….

It need hardly be said that Horgan is a respectable man – not a terrorist suspect, nor a whining dreadlocked git, nor even a participant in any of those tiresome quilting and drumming workshops on the roundabout leading into Shannon [Airport] . However, he does point out, repeatedly, that the extraordinary rendition story has absolutely not gone away, despite the presence of a goodie in the White House. Shannon is still a US military zone, with 5,000 US troops passing through it every week, and, as Amnesty International points out, the government is still resolutely refusing to search suspected rendition flights landing there.

What does the Obama administration fear from the presence of Dr. Horgan? If there is fear, it is on the side of those who politically oppose U.S. policies, and see the revocation of Horgan’s visa as political retribution against policy critics. On the other side of all Obama’s pretty words about transparency and a new openness, the iron hand of the state is announcing it still holds its trump card, in the form of repression. And apparently, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama are not afraid of using it.

U.S. Revokes Visa of Irish Anti-Renditions Activist

Originally posted at Firedoglake

The North Carolina News Observer reports in a March 15 article that the co-founder of ShannonWatch, Edward Horgan, a well-known Irish activist and former Irish Defense Force officer, has had his 10-year, multiple-entry U.S. visa revoked without explanation. Horgan and others believe it is because of his principled stand against the U.S. use of renditions, and in particular, the use of Shannon Airport in western Ireland as a stopover for U.S. rendition flights. ShannonWatch has documented the use of the airport as a stopover for CIA rendition flights (see their page documenting such flights).

As the NO article by Christina Cowger and Robin Kirk notes, Horgan is no long-haired radical, or bomb-making terrorist. He has been a UN peace keeper, and monitored "elections in places like Ghana, Armenia, Zimbabwe, East Timor and Ukraine." According to his online resume, he has worked with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union. He is getting his Ph.D. in international relations at the University of Limerick. He is also now persona non grata in Barack Obama's supposedly more open and transparent United States.

According to Cowger and Kirk:

Last year, Horgan visited the United States to see family and attend the presidential inauguration. But this year, while observing elections in frigid Kiev, he learned that his 10-year, multiple-entry U.S. visa had been revoked.

The reason? No official will say, though Horgan is scheduled to attend an April conference at Duke University to speak about his opposition to extraordinary rendition.

In fact, Horgan is still listed on the speakers panel for the Duke conference -- "Weaving a Net of Accountability: Taking on extraordinary rendition at the state and regional level" -- along with Scott Horton; rendition victim and CIA black site torture survivor and Guantanamo prisoner, Bisher al-Rawi; psychologist-activist, and president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Stephen Soldz; ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Steven Watt; Co-director of the International Human Rights Clinic, Margaret Satterthwaite; and others. Christina Cowger, who, I should note, wrote the NO article referenced here, is also listed as a speaker, affiliated with North Carolina Stop Torture Now.

It seems reasonable to assume, lacking any other evidence, that Horgan is being politically targeted by the Obama administration. This is the kind of behavior we came to expect in the days of Bush and Cheney. But it goes with the territory. Barack Obama decided in the first weeks of his administration to maintain the previous administration's rendition program, complete with fig-leaf assurances that U.S. authorities would receive no-harm promises from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and other rendition destination sites known for wide-spread use of torture. No human rights organization believes that promise, and U.S. State Department Human Rights Country Reports have strongly criticized many of these countries for their use of torture, arbitrary detention and prison conditions.

In Working Document No. 8 (PDF), the European Union (EU) last year summarized its investigation into CIA use of European countries for the Bush rendition program. The report notes, by the way, "It is worth to remind that, in many occasions, it is not only the CIA the single organiser of the flights included in this working document... but also other entities of US administration, among [them] the Department of Defence..."

Documenting U.S. Rendition Flights in Europe

The Working Document reports over 1000 rendition flights between the end of 2001 and the end of 2005, including the "extraordinary renditions" of Abu Omar, Maher Arar, Khaled el-Masri, Ahmed al-Giza, Mohamed El-Zari, Binyam Mohammed, Bisher al Rawi, Jamil El-Banna, Abou Elkassim Britel, among others. With destinations in Jordan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Guantanamo and elsewhere, these flights had stopovers in all 25 EU countries, as well as Romania, Iceland, Switzerland, Albania, Turkey, and elsewhere.

Truly, the scope of the U.S. rendition program was world-wide, and no one really knows the full extent of the massive kidnapping and torture operation. One of the airlines associated with CIA renditions, Aero Contractors, is based in Smithfield, North Carolina.

The Obama administration has done its best, as well, to keep the lid on accountability for these crimes, using legal maneuvers to keep suits by rendition victims out of the courts, citing expanded views of "state secrets" privilege to shut down such cases. The ACLU suit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan is one of the key legal cases the U.S. has tried to squelch by the use of such tactics.

As one example, the EU report documents that the plane used for the "extraordinary renditions" of German citizen Khaled el-Masri from Skopje to Afghanistan on 24 January 2004, and Ethiopian citizen and British resident Binyam Mohammed from Rabat to Kabul on 22 January 2004 -- a Boeing 737-7ET aircraft registered as N313P (and later N4476S) -- stopped numerous times at "civilian-military airports including Frankfurt (72 times), Shannon (24), United Kingdom (23), Palma de Mallorca (7), Poland, Romania, Check [sic] Republic, Malta, Cyprus and Geneva."

The mention of Shannon brings us back to the case of Edward Horgan. An outspoken opponent of torture, Horgan made political waves in Ireland when he publicly resigned last year from the Green Party. In 2007, the Green Party entered the Irish government of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats. Since that time, they have been criticized for failing to keep to their ideals. Horgan's open letter spoke to his disenchantment on the renditions issue (emphasis in original):

The Green Party, led by John Gormley claimed to be staunch opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and opponents of the abandonment of Irish neutrality at Shannon airport. They have even abandoned the pretence that the programme for Government would impose searches on CIA associated aircraft at Shannon airport.

Not only have no such planes been searched and no investigations carried out on the use of Shannon airport in the US torture rendition programme, but whistle blowers such as Edward Horgan and Conor Cregan have been unjustifiable arrested, charged and spuriously brought before the courts several times for daring to ask the Gardai to investigate the presence of CIA aircraft at Shannon. Both have been repeatedly vindicated by the Irish courts for their whistle blowing actions at Shannon airport.

Who will vindicate those lives lost and those prisoners tortured with the active complicity of the present Irish Government at Shannon airport?

Rather than being kept out of the United States, Horgan should be given a medal for his outstanding courage and forthrightness in not abandoning the battle for accountability for one of the most incredible human rights crimes perpetrated by so-called democratic state in our lifetime. The Obama administration should be ashamed for its behavior in keeping Mr. Horgan from entering this country. And Americans should be ashamed for letting this happen, as the struggle for accountability for torture is shunted aside for political expediency, or staggers under the blows of right-wing propaganda and media indifference.

For further information, see the Amnesty International report, Breaking the Chain: Ending Ireland's Role in Renditions (PDF), or if you are in Durham, NC, April 8-10, you might want to attend the public conference noted in the article, Weaving a Net of Accountability.