CONFIDENTIAL logbooks from an executive jet used by American intelligence agencies to fly terrorist suspects to countries that routinely use torture reveal Shannon airport as one of the plane’s most regular stopping points.

The Gulfstream 5 jet, which is leased by Defence Department and CIA agents, has stopped in Shannon 14 times since January 2002, according to logs obtained by The Sunday Times and which cover more than 300 flights.

The jet, registration number N379P, can carry 14 passengers at a time. Movements detailed in the logs can be matched with several sightings of the Gulfstream at airports when terrorist suspects have been bundled away by US agents.

Analysis of the plane’s flight plans shows that it always departs from Washington DC and often stops at Shannon en route to other destinations.

Martin Cullen, the transport minister, said in the Dail recently that American authorities have told the Department of Foreign Affairs that Irish airports have not been used for the transit of prisoners to or from the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba or elsewhere.

But peace activists have claimed that Ireland, as a signatory to the UN convention against torture, has an obligation to prevent human rights abuses and should arrest anyone on Irish soil who is suspected of facilitating torture, regardless of where it occurred.

The plane has flown to 49 destinations outside America, including Guantanamo Bay and other American military bases, as well as Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan, Libya and Uzbekistan.

Witnesses have claimed that the suspects are frequently bound, gagged and sedated before being put on board the planes, which do not have special facilities for prisoners but are kitted out with tables for meetings and screens for presentations and in-flight films.

Countries with poor human rights records to which the Americans have delivered prisoners include Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan, according to the files. The logs have prompted allegations from critics that the agency is using such regimes to carry out “torture by proxy” — a charge denied by the American government.

Some of the information from the suspects is said to have been used by MI5 and MI6, the British intelligence services. The admissibility in court of evidence gained under torture is being considered in the House of Lords in an appeal by foreign-born prisoners at Belmarsh jail, south London, against their detention without trial on suspicion of terrorism.

The Gulfstream and a similarly anonymous-looking Boeing 737 are hired by American agents from Premier Executive Transport Services, a private company in Massachusetts. The white 737 has 32 seats. It is a frequent visitor to US military bases, although its exact role has not been revealed.

The Gulfstream jet is not used just for carrying prisoners but also appears to be at the disposal of defence and intelligence officials on assignments from Washington.

Its prisoner transfer missions were first reported in May by the Swedish television programme Cold Facts. It described how American agents had arrived in Stockholm in the Gulfstream in December 2001 to take two suspected terrorists from Sweden to Egypt.

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