The always tip-top Jim Bliss has a follow-up to my post of yesterday, with some intriguing points about the constitutional implications of the Republic of Ireland’s apparent involvement with secret CIA flights:

“An independent neutral republic not only has a right, it has a duty, to regulate any foreign military traffic that crosses its border…. So that we are not complicit in acts inconsistent with our international obligations. If a US airforce plane lands in Shannon and it contains people snatched from the street by the CIA en route for torture in an Uzbek detention centre, the Irish authorities have an absolute legal obligation to detain that flight and prevent a crime against humanity.”

Of course, as pointed out before, under UN resolution 47/133 (and we all remember how seriously breaches of UN resolutions are taken by Bush and Blair, right?), both the UK and the US also have an absolute legal (and, indeed, legally-reinforced moral) obligation to detain such flights…

Update: Davide also has more. The final report is being presented at a press conference this morning (though not voted on by MEPs until February), so perhaps the big boys of the proper press might get on to this at last…

Update 2: the Lib Dems and SNP have today called for an enquiry into the British government’s involvement with the flights, as well as the official government line on using information extracted under torture.