At Shannon today we marked 24 years since the opening of the Guantanamo Bay detention and torture centre. We also remembered Shannon Airport's involvement in the circuits flown by the rendition planes that brought prisoners there.

Guantanamo was set up under the George W. Bush presidency and has been kept open by every US president since. It was used to detain Muslim men and boys as part of the 'War on Terror'. Most of them were rounded up for bounties or kidnapped, and prisoners often faced rendition and torture at other CIA black sites before ending up at Guantanamo. 

At least 780 people from 48 countries have been detained at the camp since its opening, of whom 756 had been released or transferred to other detention facilities. 9 died in custody, and 15 remain there still.

At our gathering outside Shannon Airport, Niall Farrell of Galway Alliance Against War spoke of how it was used as a stopover by the plane used in the rendition of one man, Binyam Mohamed, back in 2004. But this wasn't the only one; Shannonwatch and others have documented multiple flights through Shannon by rendition planes. But despite numerous reports (see our report here), there has never been any proper investigation by the Irish authorities. Nor has there been any accountability for Shannon's complicity in US kidnapping and torture. 

This was the first monthly Shannonwatch peace vigil of 2026. Not only has the airport been involved in renditions, it has also supported the invasion and occupation of several countries by the US. And more recently it has supported the ongoing genocide in GAza.

We will keep these peace vigils going until we get the US military out of Shannon.