Storm over CIA prisoner plane claims

REPORTS that US intelligence officials have been using European airports secretly to transfer suspected Islamic extremists around the globe have unleashed a storm across Europe. The Socialist government of Spain, one of the countries whose airports were allegedly used for the transit of suspects, said yesterday it was promising "maximum transparency" on the affair, having already twice asked the US government for clarification with its own domestic credibility at stake.

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Amnesty International said yesterday that "we are obviously going to be very interested in the outcome of the official investigations underway in Spain".
Other countries are also raising the pressure on Washington. Yesterday, Iceland's Foreign Minister Geir Haarde said the US response to the allegations was "unsatisfactory". "In my judgment, the responses we've received from US authorities regarding whether or not prisoners have been on board these planes have been unsatisfactory and have left many questions unanswered," Mr Haarde said in an address to parliament.

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A Portuguese news magazine has published pictures to back an account that at least three CIA planes landed in Portugal in January 2003, although Foreign Minister Diogo Freitas do Amaral said yesterday that no CIA planes had made stopovers at Portuguese airports since the current government took office earlier this year. He dated the pictures in the report to January 2003 while denying there were any CIA detention centres in Portugal.

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The Swedish government said it has requested verification from the country's civil aviation authorities on the nature of the missions by suspect planes between January 2002 and this month after the TT news agency said several presumed CIA planes had secretly touched down. According to the news agency, one of at least two suspected CIA planes to land at Swedish airports was used at the US' Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, probably for transporting prisoners.


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17299956%255E1702,00.html

CIA planes used Swedish airports

http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=2490&date=20051114

At least two planes used by America's CIA have landed at Swedish airports, according to research by news agency TT. Arlanda, Örebro, Sturup and Bromma airports have all hosted the intelligence organisation's aircraft. One of them has been at the prison base in Guantanamo.


On 9th September this year a Raytheon Hawker 800XP, a mid-size business jet which normally takes 6-8 passengers, with the registration number N168BF, landed at Sturup.

It is unclear how long it stayed at the Malmö airport, but it is known that the plane entered Danish airspace at 10.47am on the same day and that the destination was Farnborough airport in the UK.

It is also unclear where the plane came from. It was not previously linked with the CIA but it is owned by a company which has other planes used by the intelligence organisation.

of course they weren't in WWII either.

what are they hiding? answers are necessary, if not public, then by someone accountable. we have a bad administration, and what's worse, we have a bad administration that has run amok.