56 CIA Prisoner Transport Flights Overflew Portugal -Lawmaker

Source: AFP

A total of 56 flights used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for transporting prisoners used Portuguese airspace between July 2005 and December 2007, a lawmaker said Friday.

Communist deputy Jorge Machado said the figures were contained in a report he had seen from the transport ministry to the government, which has previously said it had no proof of illegality.

Machado said five of the flights stopped over at the military base of Lajes in the Portuguese Azores archipelago, which the U.S. has used for more than some 50 years.

Machado urged the government to come clean on what it knew, accusing it of passive connivance with the CIA practice of extraordinary rendition, whereby terrorism suspects are flown covertly to a third country or to U.S.-run detention centers.

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