The Galway Alliance Against War has issued a statement condemning the arrest and imprisonment of Deputy Mick Wallace. The Independent Wexford TD was arrested at Clontarf Garda Station by appointment yesterday and brought to Limerick Prison.
Dep Wallace’s arrest was sought on foot of non-payment of a €2,000 fine imposed in April following his conviction for breaching airport regulations at Shannon Airport. Both Dep Wallace and Independent Deputy Clare Daly were prosecuted for entering a restricted area of the airport last year in an attempt to search a US military aircraft at the facility.
At the time both TDs indicated that they would not pay the fine.
“In this supposed season of peace and goodwill the authorities have arrested the peacemaker Deputy Mick Wallace,” GAAW spokesperson Niall Farrell said in a statement. “It highlights once more the hypocrisy of this Government, which pretends to support peace in the world and Irish neutrality, but at the same time allows Shannon Airport to continue to be a US military base through which Washington has waged war on the world for the past 14 years, leaving a bloody trail of countless deaths and widespread devastation resulting in an ever growing swell of refugees.
“We hear many weasel words about fighting ‘terrorism and terrorists’, but Brendan Behan summed up this hypocrisy when he said: ‘It is easy to spot the terrorist, he’s the one with the small bomb.’”
