David Norris (Independent)

We have been named and shamed in the Marty report as being in "category A". We have been asked to do something about this by the human rights section of the United Nations, the Irish Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International — I could go on and on.

The practices to which I have referred are gross in the extreme and I would like to put them, as determined by the Marty report, on the record. Reference was made to the lack of evidence but there is plenty of clear, cogent, factual evidence, itemised point by point in the report. Detailed observations, flight patterns and climatic conditions are all included. The report makes an absolutely cast-iron case about rendition and it describes what is known as the "security check" as follows:

i. it generally takes place in a small room (a locker room, a police reception area) at the airport, or at a transit facility nearby.

ii. the man is sometimes already blindfolded when the operation begins, or will be blindfolded quickly and remain so throughout most of the operation.

iii. four to six CIA agents perform the operation in a highly-disciplined, consistent fashion- They are dressed in black (either civilian clothes or special 'uniforms'), wearing black gloves, with their full faces covered. Testimonies speak, variously, of "big people in black balaclavas", people "dressed in black like ninjas", or people wearing "ordinary clothes, but hooded".

iv. the CIA agents "don't utter a word when they communicate with one another", using only hand signals ...

v. some men speak of being punched or shoved by the agents at the beginning of the operation in a rough or brutal fashion; others talked about being gripped firmly from several sides.

vi. the man's hands and feet are shackled.

vii. the man has all his clothes (including his underwear) cut from his body using knives or scissors in a careful, methodical fashion; an eye-witness described how "someone was taking these clothes and feeling every part, you know, as if there was something inside the clothes, and then putting them in a bag".

viii. the man is subjected to a full-body cavity search, which also entails a close examination of his hair, ears, mouth and lips.

ix. the man is photographed with a flash camera ...

x. some accounts speak of a foreign object being forcibly inserted into the man's anus; some accounts speak more specifically of a tranquiliser or suppository being administered per rectum — in each description this practice has been perceived as a grossly violating act that affronts the man's dignity.

I do not have time to read the full description into the record but I hope I have read enough to shame all of us in this House. Deputy Michael D. Higgins stated in the Dáil last night that these practices are "in breach of every single principle of international law, namely, the manner of apprehension, the manner of transporting, the issue of habeas corpus, the right to legal protection, delivering a person inhuman treatment and the delivery of a person through enforced disappearance into an ill-defined and indeterminate place of detention".

This is the mess we have gotten ourselves into. If only the Government had listened several years ago when I and my colleagues on this side of the House, and many decent Members of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, referred to these practices and tried to stop it from averting its eyes from the horror in which it was rapidly enmeshing itself and becoming complicit, we would not be in this mess tonight.