Shannonwatch

A Peace Forum took place at Shannon Airport on the 6th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, in which the Irish Government was a willing participant. The Iraq and Afghan wars have led to the unlawful and unjustified deaths of up to one million people. This forum was held to highlight the need for accountability for the Irish Governments complicity with the war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Below is a series of three videos made at the regular monthly ShannonWatch vigil  on 8th March 2009. The vigil, which is held to highlight the airport's complicity in war and human rights violations, coincided with International Woman's Day, and to mark the occasion a number of speakers addressed the vigil.

1. Dr. Ed Horgan highlights the misuse of Shannonairport by the US Military and the CIA.

On January 16th, Shannon Airport Authority confirmed that 256,353 US troops used the airports facilities in 2008. According to figures from the airport authority, the final quarter of 2008 proved to be the busiest quarter for the airport in terms of troop traffic last year.

The full breakdown of "official" troop numbers passing through the airport in 2008 were as follows:

Jan 26,859

Feb 18,830

Mar 21,019

Kalitta Air is an airline known to have connections to covert intelligence and military operations (see Amnesty International report, USA: Below the radar: Secret flights to torture and disappearance). Their planes pass through Irish airspace with alarming regularity - there were over 220 of heir flights between the start of September and the end of December 2008. On Dec 20th and again on Dec 22nd one of their planes, N703CK, landed at Shannon Airport.

On Sunday 25 January 2009, what is probably a US Navy C-9B Skytrain logistics aircraft was photographed at Shannon airport in neutral Ireland, at about 11 am. Even though it had no obvious military markings, it was being guarded by an Irish army security patrol. The registration number it is obliged to display was incomplete. The only number it displayed was 0050. As far as we can establish its full aircraft registration number is 160050.