4.05.2006
Amnesty Demands Public Inquiry on Rendition Flights (Guardian.co.uk)
Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday April 5, 2006
The Guardian
Amnesty International today calls for an independent public inquiry into all aspects of British involvement in secret CIA "extraordinary rendition" flights. The call comes as it reports details of more than 200 CIA flights passing through British airports.
It also reveals US efforts to ensure conditions and locations where detainees were held were kept secret. Four of the CIA's 26 planes have landed and taken off more than 200 times from British airports over the past five years, Amnesty says. They include Stansted, Gatwick, Luton, Glasgow, Prestwick, Edinburgh, Londonderry and Belfast. Others used are RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, Biggin Hill in Kent, and RAF Leuchars in Scotland, as well as the Turks and Caicos islands, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean.
Amnesty's report - Below the Radar: Secret Flights to Torture and "Disappearance" - shows a pattern of nearly 1,000 flights directly linked to the CIA through "front" companies, most of which, it says, have used European airspace. A further 600 CIA flights were made by planes hired from US aviation companies.
Amnesty says detainees were abducted or handed over to US guards by other law enforcement agencies before being "disappeared". In what it says is the only detailed information to emerge from an Eastern European or Central Asian "black site" prison, detainees had described being prepared for transportation by black-masked "ninjas".
(More ... Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Amnesty demands public inquiry on rendition flights) ¶ 21:58
Wednesday April 5, 2006
The Guardian
Amnesty International today calls for an independent public inquiry into all aspects of British involvement in secret CIA "extraordinary rendition" flights. The call comes as it reports details of more than 200 CIA flights passing through British airports.
It also reveals US efforts to ensure conditions and locations where detainees were held were kept secret. Four of the CIA's 26 planes have landed and taken off more than 200 times from British airports over the past five years, Amnesty says. They include Stansted, Gatwick, Luton, Glasgow, Prestwick, Edinburgh, Londonderry and Belfast. Others used are RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, Biggin Hill in Kent, and RAF Leuchars in Scotland, as well as the Turks and Caicos islands, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean.
Amnesty's report - Below the Radar: Secret Flights to Torture and "Disappearance" - shows a pattern of nearly 1,000 flights directly linked to the CIA through "front" companies, most of which, it says, have used European airspace. A further 600 CIA flights were made by planes hired from US aviation companies.
Amnesty says detainees were abducted or handed over to US guards by other law enforcement agencies before being "disappeared". In what it says is the only detailed information to emerge from an Eastern European or Central Asian "black site" prison, detainees had described being prepared for transportation by black-masked "ninjas".
(More ... Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Amnesty demands public inquiry on rendition flights) ¶ 21:58
