News and opinion
Source: Irish Central
Shamseddin Gaidan joined rebels in Syria last year without his parent consent. The circumstances surrounding his death remain unclear. His father Ibrahim, who runs a halal grocery shop in Navan, was informed of his son’s death in a phone call from Syria the Irish Times reports.
“We don’t know where or how he was killed and we don’t know where his body might be,” said Mr Gaidan.
“It is very difficult to get any information. This confusion makes our grief much worse.”
Source: Irish Times
A report this week by the Open Society Justice Initiative, a human-rights advocacy group, details the co-operation that 54 states, including Ireland, afforded the US Central Intelligence Agency in its secret rendition of terror suspects. Among the European countries most implicated in the CIA’s counterterrorism network are Poland, Lithuania and Romania, which allowed the US intelligence service to run secret prisons, or “black sites”, in their territories.
Ireland regularly allowed flights associated with the CIA’s rendition programme to stop and refuel at Shannon in the years immediately after the 9/11 attacks. In the largest list compiled to date, the report identifies 136 detainees who were held or transferred illegally by the CIA. It links the apprehension and transfer of three suspects to aircraft and flight schedules that included stopovers at Shannon between 2002 and 2004.
One of the principal sources of evidence against Ireland comes from documents disclosed in a case brought by rendition victims against Jeppesen Dataplan, a US company that provided flight-planning and logistical-support services for CIA flights.
islaminireland.com
Source: Irish Times
The discovery of pork DNA in halal meat will negatively affect the Irish meat industry, Irish Muslims have said.
“The news of this has reached all Muslims residing in Ireland,” said Dr Ali Selim of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland.
On Sunday British food distributor 3663 identified McColgan Quality Foods Limited, a Tyrone-based company, as the source of “the very small number of halal savoury beef pastry products” found to contain pork DNA, supplied to British prisons.
Shops selling halal meat, of which there are 22 in Dublin, face declining trade because “if we know it might have pork in it we definitely will not buy it”, said Dr Selim.
Dr Mudafar Al Tawash, from the Islamic Foundation of Ireland, said contaminated food was “religiously and ethically” unacceptable and would undermine exports.
“We are very disappointed. That affects the market and we are working very hard to convince people from the Middle East market to come to Ireland to buy meat.”
Abdul Haseeb, a former editor of the Irish Muslim magazine, said the discovery raised the question of whether the presence of trace amounts of pork in food was acceptable.
Muslim Ireland 