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Today's Must Read
It's looking grim for CIA operations in Europe. The European Parliament has just concluded a year-long inquiry into European complicity with U.S. renditions -- the extra-legal abduction and transfer of terrorism subjects. Ever since Dana Priest of the Washington Post reported the presence of CIA "black sites" -- off-the-books detention facilities -- in two EU countries, it's been a source of furious controversy.
Today's report apparently doesn't give definitive proof that European countries colluded in the maintenance of secret prisons, but it does single out specific countries for complicity in renditions, and also alleges over 1,000 "undeclared flights" by CIA aircraft over European airspace, which is meant to suggest transfers of detainees to Guantanamo Bay or Afghanistan:
BRITAIN — Telegrams from the MI5 security service to an unspecified foreign government suggest the abduction of British residents Bisher Al-Rawi and Jamil El-Banna (to Afghanistan and Guantanamo) was facilitated by partly erroneous information it had supplied. Al-Rawi and El-Banna ended up in Guantanamo.
ITALY — A carabinieri marshal and certain officials from the Italian military security and intelligence services played an active role in the abduction of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar, kidnapped by the CIA from a Milan street.GERMANY — The German Federal Criminal Police provided details of the whereabouts of Mohammed Zammar to the FBI, which facilitated the kidnapping of the German citizen, who was then detained by U.S. agents and tortured in Morocco and Syria.
How the CIA used European airspace:
At least 1,245 undeclared flights operated by the CIA flew into European airspace or stopped over at European airfields after Sept. 11, 2001. While it has not been proven detainees were on board, the European Parliament says many of the planes were routinely used for transporting terror suspects from Afghanistan to Guantanamo, or to and from other secret detention centers.
We'll post the report as soon as we have it. It's sure to cause significant transatlantic tension.
Comments (14)
Johann wrote on February 14, 2007 9:00 AM:"At least 1,245 undeclared flights operated by the CIA flew into European airspace or stopped over at European airfields after Sept. 11, 2001."
This has to say something really bad about the European Air Defence Command. They are either really incompetent or were complicit in allowing these "undeclared" flights.
Dennis wrote on February 14, 2007 9:23 AM:All the denials about one thing or another of this Iraq war that have emminated from/by the White House have eventually been exposed.
Yet, inspite of all the deaths, the tortures, the misspent money, the lies, the perpetrators in the White House will go free.
You don't have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.
marty wrote on February 14, 2007 10:02 AM:And yet.... to this very day, Bush and various Administration officials still will say with straight faces that we do not torture.
Greg Gammon wrote on February 14, 2007 11:29 AM:Has anyone state-side investigated the role of our own Navy Engineering Logistics Office in these flights?
ElGringo wrote on February 14, 2007 12:20 PM:Spanish newspaper El Pais informs today (http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/agentes/investigaron/Guantanamo/pista/fundador/Qaeda/Espana/elpepunac/20070214elpepinac_3/Tes)
that in July 2002 (under the previous Aznar Government), spanish police-officers visited Guantanamo where they interrogated a number of prisoners.
Obviously, this piece of info comes too late to be included in the European Report mentioned above.
Tio Wally wrote on February 14, 2007 1:00 PM:All of the information about the CIA flights, including various European governments' complicity, can be found in Stephen Grey's book "Ghost Plane."
Cynic wrote on February 14, 2007 5:22 PM:Is this the report?
tom baker wrote on February 14, 2007 6:02 PM:http://www.europarl.europa.eu/comparl/tempcom/tdip/draft_final_report_en.pdf
great. we're going to get kicked out of the civilized world.
Media Concepts wrote on February 14, 2007 7:05 PM:Why do you fall into the trap of using the U.S. government's euphemism "rendition"? Call it what it is -- kidnapping and sending suspects to other countries so that they can be tortured.
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