WP:Probe of Detainee Transfers Finds Many CIA Flights

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Thursday, April 27, 2006

BERLIN, April 26 -- European Parliament investigators said Wednesday they had uncovered evidence that the CIA has organized more than 1,000 flights through European airspace since 2001 as part of a secret program to transfer and detain terrorism suspects. A parliamentary committee investigating CIA counterterrorism tactics in Europe reported that it had obtained records of the flights from Eurocontrol, the continent's primary air traffic management agency.

The flights were by U.S.-registered aircraft that investigators believe were chartered by the CIA or owned by front companies working for the agency. Investigators acknowledged that they had no idea how many of the flights were actually used to transport terrorism suspects. But they accused the CIA of violating human rights conventions and European law by concealing the purpose of the flights and not reporting passenger manifests to local authorities.

"The routes for some of these flights seem to be quite suspect," Italian lawmaker Giovanni Claudio Fava, head of the Parliament committee, told reporters in Brussels. "They are rather strange routes for flights to take. It is hard to imagine those stopovers were simply for providing fuel."

The preliminary report also criticized several European countries -- including Sweden, Italy and Macedonia -- saying they had allowed CIA officers to apprehend or detain terrorism suspects on their soil and then covered up their
presence. "No one among the national security authorities -- save for a few exceptions -- has ever cared to verify what was the real aim of those flights, who were in their crew and passengers, or rather prisoners," Fava said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/26/AR2006042601549.html

[spindrifter]

1. 1,000 secret CIA flights revealed

Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday April 27, 2006
The Guardian


"The CIA has, on several occasions, clearly been responsible for kidnapping and illegally detaining alleged terrorists on the territory of member states, as well as for extraordinary renditions," said Mr Fava, a member of the European parliament's socialist group.
<anip>
Mr Fava referred to the alleged abduction of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar by CIA agents in a Milan street in 2003, to Khalid al-Masri, who was transferred from Macedonia to Afghanistan, and the transfer of a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, from New York to Syria, among other incidents.
<snip>
Mr Fava's committee did not report on secret prisons, but he said EU parliamentarians intended to visit Romania and Poland where, it is suspected, the CIA had secret interrogation camps.
<snip>
Extraordinary renditions would breach European human rights legislation and British domestic law.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=364&topic_id=1034466&mesg_id=1034466

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The last paragraph provides the basis for charging those responsible, American and British--and I am assuming the British did in fact have a role in this--with crimes before the World Court. BushCo, prepare to surrender your passports.