‘Ghost Planes’ Make Suspects Disappear
Pentagon has new secret weapon in ‘war on terror’
By Christopher Bollyn
There has been a flurry of articles recently in the U.S. press about
an executive jet used by “American intelligence agencies” to transport
abducted “terrorist suspects” for interrogation to third countries
that use torture. The mainstream media, however, largely omits
essential details about “extraordinary rendition,” a practice begun
during the Clinton administration, and ignores the legal questions it
raises.
The Sunday Times (UK) wrote about the mystery jet, a Gulfstream 5, on
Nov. 14, saying it had obtained the logs of some 300 flights showing
“the movements of the Gulfstream 5 leased by agents from the U.S.
defense department and the CIA.”
According to the Times, the logs indicate that the U.S. has used the
plane to transport abducted “prisoners” to “countries with poor human
rights records” where they have been turned over to the authorities
for “torture by proxy.”
During the past two years, the plane, which “always” departs from
Washington, “has flown to 49 destinations outside America, including
the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba and other U.S. military bases.”
Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan are among the
foreign destinations of the “torture jet,” which has the registration
number N379P.
The Gulfstream made at least seven trips to Uzbekistan, a dictatorship
allied with the United States in the “war on terror,” where, the Times
wrote, the “secret police are notorious for their interrogation
methods, including the alleged boiling of prisoners.”
“I have come across many cases of rape in front of family members who
they wish to extract information from,” Craig Murray, the former
British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said recently on Swedish television.
“I have post mortem photos of a corpse,” Murray said. “These show that
the person was boiled to death.”
The Washington Post, Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune all recently
reported on the torture jet, but have focused on the phony companies
with whom the plane is registered rather than on the serious crimes it
is being used to commit.
Much of the information about the “torture flights” has come from a
Swedish journalist, Fredrik Laurin, who has produced four television
programs about the kidnapping of two Egyptians from Sweden in December
2001.
The four-part Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts) program about the “enforced
disappearance” of the two Egyptians, Ahmed Agiza, 39, and Muhammad Al
Zery, 33, began on Swedish television on May 17, 2004, and can be
viewed on-line. The most important details of the abductions, however,
are not found in the U.S. press.
In the afternoon of Dec. 18, 2001, Ahmed Agiza was picked up by police
on his way home from Swedish lessons in the western Sweden town of
Karlstad. His wife and five children awaited him at home. Meanwhile in
Stockholm, Swedish security police, the SÄPO, arrested Al Zery at his
job. The two Egyptians were then driven to Bromma airport in
Stockholm.
Paul Forell, a policeman with 25 years experience, was stationed at
the police station at Bromma airport that night. Forell told Laurin
what he observed:
“First came the security police. . . after five or 10 minutes two
Americans arrived, in civilian suits, and we stood there for a while
talking,” he said. The Americans, he said, were about 35 years old,
gave their first names and said they were from the U.S. Embassy.
“Well, then came this group with the arrested men into the station,
and everything went very fast,” Forell said. “The arrested men,
wearing their own clothes, were shackled hand and foot.”
Asked who brought the men into the station, Forell said: “The
Americans. The Swedish policemen stayed behind in the outer, public
premises,” he said. “There were three to four men to each of the
arrested.” The Americans were “dressed in jeans and shirts, and
wearing black masks.”
Forell, a bystander, was the only uniformed policeman. “There was
hardly room for me in my own station,” he said.
Laurin described what happened next: The arrested men were placed in
the station’s changing-room and, while shackled hand and foot, their
clothes were cut off in pieces. When the men were naked,
“suppositories of an unknown kind were inserted into their rectums.”
Dressed in diapers and dark overalls, blindfolded and hooded, the men
were taken to the cars, Laurin reported.
The Gulfstream 5 with the registration N379P, “flying for the U.S.
Department of Defense,” waited several hundred yards away, Laurin
said.
“One of the prisoners was placed lying on the floor with his hands and
feet cuffed together behind his back. The other was strapped fast in
the cabin, with his hands over his head.”
The two arrested Egyptians, about eight Americans and two SÄPO police
took off at 9:49 p.m., Kalla Fakta reported. “When the plane landed in
Cairo at 3 a.m., the men were turned over to Egyptian intelligence
officers.”
“Disguised agents from an elite American military unit, answering
directly to the White House, are allowed to take command on Swedish
soil, contrary to Swedish law. In a secret and brutal operation, two
Egyptians who have asylum in Sweden are kidnapped and brought to Egypt
to be tortured,” Kalla Fakta reported. “They are suspected of
terrorism, but no evidence is presented.”
After two and a half years of torture in an Egyptian prison, Al Zery
was declared innocent and released. Agiza, in a military trial, was
sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The Gulfstream 5 has completed at least 72 such operations in more
than 30 countries, Laurin reported. And it always follows the same
pattern. “After takeoff from its home base in Smithfield, N.C., it
makes a short stop at Dulles International Airport, close to CIA
headquarters and the Pentagon.
“It flies exclusively to countries that are allied with the U.S. in
the fight against terror: Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Uzbekistan
and Pakistan,” Kalla Fakta reported, “countries where prisoners are
kept and interrogated, far beyond the reach of American and
international courts.”
U.S. enforced disappearances from Sweden are nothing new, according to
journalist Sven Anér. More than 10 years ago, on Sept. 28, 1994, nine
Estonian survivors from the Estonia ferry disaster “disappeared” in a
similar manner. The day after the sinking, nine crew members were
removed from the lists of 146 reported survivors as a Gulfstream 4
(Reg. N971L), and a Boeing 727-200 (Reg. VR-CLM) left Stockholm’s
Arlanda airport carrying four and five unregistered passengers each.
Anér has the documents from the airport’s archive that show that the
fees for the two airplanes were paid by the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm.
“Enforced disappearance” and torture are “crimes against humanity,”
according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,
which the Bush administration opposes.
While inquiries at the Departments of State, Defense and Justice about
the legality of “extraordinary renditions” went unanswered, a March
19, 2004, memo from Jack L. Goldsmith, assistant attorney general,
clearly reveals the Bush administration’s intent to defy international
law.
.
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| User: "Nonsequiturlexa" |
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| Title: Re: 'Ghost Planes' Make suspects disappear |
06 Feb 2005 02:09:38 PM |
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|
Subject: 'Ghost Planes' Make suspects disappear
From:
Date: 2/5/2005 10:55 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id: <tqfb01992sq24usp01oi6d40t04cihh9qc@4ax.com>
‘Ghost Planes’ Make Suspects Disappear
Pentagon has new secret weapon in ‘war on terror’
By Christopher Bollyn
There has been a flurry of articles recently in the U.S. press about
an executive jet used by “American intelligence agencies” to transport
abducted “terrorist suspects” for interrogation to third countries
that use torture. The mainstream media, however, largely omits
essential details about “extraordinary rendition,” a practice begun
during the Clinton administration, and ignores the legal questions it
raises.
The Sunday Times (UK) wrote about the mystery jet, a Gulfstream 5, on
Nov. 14, saying it had obtained the logs of some 300 flights showing
“the movements of the Gulfstream 5 leased by agents from the U.S.
defense department and the CIA.”
According to the Times, the logs indicate that the U.S. has used the
plane to transport abducted “prisoners” to “countries with poor human
rights records” where they have been turned over to the authorities
for “torture by proxy.”
During the past two years, the plane, which “always” departs from
Washington, “has flown to 49 destinations outside America, including
the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba and other U.S. military bases.”
Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan are among the
foreign destinations of the “torture jet,” which has the registration
number N379P.
The Gulfstream made at least seven trips to Uzbekistan, a dictatorship
allied with the United States in the “war on terror,” where, the Times
wrote, the “secret police are notorious for their interrogation
methods, including the alleged boiling of prisoners.”
“I have come across many cases of rape in front of family members who
they wish to extract information from,” Craig Murray, the former
British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said recently on Swedish television.
“I have post mortem photos of a corpse,” Murray said. “These show that
the person was boiled to death.”
The Washington Post, Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune all recently
reported on the torture jet, but have focused on the phony companies
with whom the plane is registered rather than on the serious crimes it
is being used to commit.
Much of the information about the “torture flights” has come from a
Swedish journalist, Fredrik Laurin, who has produced four television
programs about the kidnapping of two Egyptians from Sweden in December
2001.
The four-part Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts) program about the “enforced
disappearance” of the two Egyptians, Ahmed Agiza, 39, and Muhammad Al
Zery, 33, began on Swedish television on May 17, 2004, and can be
viewed on-line. The most important details of the abductions, however,
are not found in the U.S. press.
In the afternoon of Dec. 18, 2001, Ahmed Agiza was picked up by police
on his way home from Swedish lessons in the western Sweden town of
Karlstad. His wife and five children awaited him at home. Meanwhile in
Stockholm, Swedish security police, the SÄPO, arrested Al Zery at his
job. The two Egyptians were then driven to Bromma airport in
Stockholm.
Paul Forell, a policeman with 25 years experience, was stationed at
the police station at Bromma airport that night. Forell told Laurin
what he observed:
“First came the security police. . . after five or 10 minutes two
Americans arrived, in civilian suits, and we stood there for a while
talking,” he said. The Americans, he said, were about 35 years old,
gave their first names and said they were from the U.S. Embassy.
“Well, then came this group with the arrested men into the station,
and everything went very fast,” Forell said. “The arrested men,
wearing their own clothes, were shackled hand and foot.”
Asked who brought the men into the station, Forell said: “The
Americans. The Swedish policemen stayed behind in the outer, public
premises,” he said. “There were three to four men to each of the
arrested.” The Americans were “dressed in jeans and shirts, and
wearing black masks.”
Forell, a bystander, was the only uniformed policeman. “There was
hardly room for me in my own station,” he said.
Laurin described what happened next: The arrested men were placed in
the station’s changing-room and, while shackled hand and foot, their
clothes were cut off in pieces. When the men were naked,
“suppositories of an unknown kind were inserted into their rectums.”
Dressed in diapers and dark overalls, blindfolded and hooded, the men
were taken to the cars, Laurin reported.
The Gulfstream 5 with the registration N379P, “flying for the U.S.
Department of Defense,” waited several hundred yards away, Laurin
said.
“One of the prisoners was placed lying on the floor with his hands and
feet cuffed together behind his back. The other was strapped fast in
the cabin, with his hands over his head.”
The two arrested Egyptians, about eight Americans and two SÄPO police
took off at 9:49 p.m., Kalla Fakta reported. “When the plane landed in
Cairo at 3 a.m., the men were turned over to Egyptian intelligence
officers.”
“Disguised agents from an elite American military unit, answering
directly to the White House, are allowed to take command on Swedish
soil, contrary to Swedish law. In a secret and brutal operation, two
Egyptians who have asylum in Sweden are kidnapped and brought to Egypt
to be tortured,” Kalla Fakta reported. “They are suspected of
terrorism, but no evidence is presented.”
After two and a half years of torture in an Egyptian prison, Al Zery
was declared innocent and released. Agiza, in a military trial, was
sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The Gulfstream 5 has completed at least 72 such operations in more
than 30 countries, Laurin reported. And it always follows the same
pattern. “After takeoff from its home base in Smithfield, N.C., it
makes a short stop at Dulles International Airport, close to CIA
headquarters and the Pentagon.
“It flies exclusively to countries that are allied with the U.S. in
the fight against terror: Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Uzbekistan
and Pakistan,” Kalla Fakta reported, “countries where prisoners are
kept and interrogated, far beyond the reach of American and
international courts.”
U.S. enforced disappearances from Sweden are nothing new, according to
journalist Sven Anér. More than 10 years ago, on Sept. 28, 1994, nine
Estonian survivors from the Estonia ferry disaster “disappeared” in a
similar manner. The day after the sinking, nine crew members were
removed from the lists of 146 reported survivors as a Gulfstream 4
(Reg. N971L), and a Boeing 727-200 (Reg. VR-CLM) left Stockholm’s
Arlanda airport carrying four and five unregistered passengers each.
Anér has the documents from the airport’s archive that show that the
fees for the two airplanes were paid by the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm.
“Enforced disappearance” and torture are “crimes against humanity,”
according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,
which the Bush administration opposes.
While inquiries at the Departments of State, Defense and Justice about
the legality of “extraordinary renditions” went unanswered, a March
19, 2004, memo from Jack L. Goldsmith, assistant attorney general,
clearly reveals the Bush administration’s intent to defy international
law.
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