Woman anti-Shell protester threatened with police rape

This video from Ireland is called Shell in Mayo: A New Nigeria?

This video from Ireland says about itself:

Gardaí (police) in Co Mayo, Ireland have been recorded talking about threatening to rape a woman in their custody. The Gardaí, including a Sergeant, have been prominent in policing protests against Shell’s inland gas refinery.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain, about Ireland:

Fury at garda ‘rape threat‘

Wednesday 06 April 2011

by Our Foreign Desk

Dublin rushed to reassure victims of sexual abuse today that their cases would be fully investigated following allegations that senior Garda officers threatened to rape an environmental protester who had refused to give her name.

A sergeant and two colleagues were recorded laughing about making sex attack threats on two women at a controversial gas extraction scheme at Corrib in north Mayo after a video camera seized from the activists was left recording in the back of a patrol car.

The Garda Ombudsman took the unusual step of starting a public interest inquiry on Tuesday.

And today Minister for Justice Alan Shatter said: “I want to assure anyone who is a victim of a sexual offence or rape that they will get a full and proper considered approach from the Garda Síochána.

“The victims should not have any doubt about that, that if they are a victim of any sexual offence, it will be fully and properly investigated.”

A 37-minute clip of the conversation has been viewed more than 11,000 times online.

It includes threats to deport and rape one of the protesters who refused to give her name.

A senior gard, understood to be a sergeant, says she was told she would be arrested.

A colleague joins in: “And deported,” before the sergeant says: “Give me your name and address or I’ll rape you.”

Sinn Fein justice spokesman Jonathan O’Brien said gardai have a lot of questions to answer.

“For somebody to put their trust in the gardai and to have it betrayed in this manner, it’s not on and it’s very disturbing,” he said.

Formal complaints are to be lodged with the Garda Ombudsman from the two women and also Sinn Fein.

Shell to Sea protest spokeswoman Caoimhe Kerins said: “This is shocking and extremely serious. It is very frightening for those of us involved in the campaign.”

Corrib has been the most bitterly divisive industrial project in Ireland for a decade.

Opponents criticise a state contract with Shell which guarantees the energy giant massive profits from natural gas fields containing tens of millions, if not billions of euros’ worth of fuel.

Locals have fought for years over the pipeline route in the north Mayo Gaeltacht – across bogland, near isolated homes and through Sruwaddacon Bay, an area of outstanding beauty – and the high pressure being used to pump gas onshore in an area of unstable geography.

From the Shell to Sea site in Ireland:

Garda in Mayo took revenge for the publication of the Corrib cops rape threat video yesterday by attacking Shell to Sea campaigners during another protest near the site where the women were arrested.

Protest in Dublin over “rape” comments by Irish police: here.

A major scandal over a long-running programme of secret surveillance by the Garda (police) has engulfed the Fine Gael/Labour Party government in Dublin: here.