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Billy Kelleher was Fianna Fáíl’s only MEP from being elected in 2019 for the South constituency until he was joined from the subs bench by Barry Andrews. He previously he served as a senator since 1993, and as a TD since 1997, including as and served as a minister of state from 2007 to 2011.
There have been numerous credible reports of people being taken hostage by invading Russian troops in Ukraine, including that of Svetlana Zalizetska mentioned here.
In 2011, when Billy was a government minister, it was reported that Ireland’s acceptance rate of refugees was 1.3 per cent, the lowest in the EU, far below the average of 25 per cent.
The American Servicemembers Protection Act of 2002 – informally known as the Hague Invasion Act authorises the president of the US to use “all means necessary” to bring about the release of US citizens extradited to the Hague to face trial by the International Criminal Court, which tries war criminals. Many Americans have been credibly accused of war crimes, notable at the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In 2015, a US airstrike hit a hospital operated by Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) killing at least 42 people in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The attack forced MSF to leave the area of Kunduz.
The CIA is known to operate a network of torture facilities in Poland, Romania Thailand Afghanistan and other countries. Gina Haspel, who ran a black site in Thailand, became Director of the CIA during the Trump administration, though her involvement in CIA torture facilities was known. According to Village magazine (2005) an aircraft with registration number N313P [later changed to N4476S] was routed through Shannon and Dublin on 14 occasions from 1 January 2003 to the end of 2004 (1). N313P is known to be an aircraft owned by the CIA (2-3). It has been used to render numerous people including Khalid El-Masri.
