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<font size=3>November 14, 2004 <br>
<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/" eudora="autourl">http://www.timesonline.co.uk/<br>
</a>US accused of ‘torture flights’<br>
Stephen Grey<br>
<img src="cid:6.1.2.0.2.20041115182338.02041e48@66.103.156.66.1" width=1 height=5 alt="1afdc55.jpg"><br><br>
AN executive jet is being used by the American intelligence agencies to
fly terrorist suspects to countries that routinely use torture in their
prisons. <br><br>
The movements of the Gulfstream 5 leased by agents from the United States
defence department and the CIA are detailed in confidential logs obtained
by The Sunday Times which cover more than 300 flights. <br><br>
Countries with poor human rights records to which the Americans have
delivered prisoners include Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan, according to the
files. The logs have prompted allegations from critics that the agency is
using such regimes to carry out “torture by proxy” a charge denied by
the American government. <br><br>
Some of the information from the suspects is said to have been used by
MI5 and MI6, the British intelligence services. The admissibility in
court of evidence gained under torture is being considered in the House
of Lords in an appeal by foreign-born prisoners at Belmarsh jail, south
London, against their detention without trial on suspicion of terrorism.
<br><br>
Over the past two years the unmarked Gulfstream has visited British
airports on many occasions, although it is not believed to have been
carrying suspects at the time. <br><br>
The Gulfstream and a similarly anonymous-looking Boeing 737 are hired by
American agents from Premier Executive Transport Services, a private
company in Massachusetts. <br><br>
The white 737, registration number N313P, has 32 seats. <br><br>
It is a frequent visitor to American military bases, although its exact
role has not been revealed. <br><br>
More is known about the Gulfstream, which has the registration number
N379P and can carry 14 passengers. Movements detailed in the logs can be
matched with several sightings of the Gulfstream at airports when
terrorist suspects have been bundled away by US counterterrorist agents.
<br><br>
Analysis of the plane’s flight plans, covering more than two years, shows
that it always departs from Washington DC. It has flown to 49
destinations outside America, including the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in
Cuba and other US military bases, as well as Egypt, Jordan, Iraq,
Morocco, Afghanistan, Libya and Uzbekistan. <br><br>
Witnesses have claimed that the suspects are frequently bound, gagged and
sedated before being put on board the planes, which do not have special
facilities for prisoners but are kitted out with tables for meetings and
screens for presentations and in-flight films. <br><br>
The US plane is not used just for carrying prisoners but also appears to
be at the disposal of defence and intelligence officials on assignments
from Washington. <br><br>
Its prisoner transfer missions were first reported in May by the Swedish
television programme Cold Facts. It described how American agents had
arrived in Stockholm in the Gulfstream in December 2001 to take two
suspected terrorists from Sweden to Egypt. <br><br>
At the time of what was presented as an “extradition” to Egypt, Swedish
ministers made no public mention of American involvement in the detention
of Ahmed Agiza, 42, and Muhammed Zery, 35, who was later cleared.
<br><br>
Witnesses described seeing the prisoners handed to US agents whose faces
were masked by hoods. The clothes of the handcuffed prisoners were cut
off and they were dressed in nappies covered by orange overalls before
being forcibly given sedatives by suppository. <br><br>
The Gulfstream flew them to Egypt, where both prisoners claimed they were
beaten and tortured with electric shocks to their genitals. Despite
liberal Swedish laws on freedom of information, diplomatic telegrams on
the case released to the media were edited to conceal the complaints of
torture. <br><br>
Hamida Shalaby, Agiza’s mother, said: “The mattress had electricity . . .
When they connected to the electricity, his body would rise up and then
fall down and this up and down would go on until they unplugged
electricity.” <br><br>
A month before the Swedish extradition, the same Gulfstream was
identified by Masood Anwar, a Pakistani newspaper reporter in Karachi.
Airport staff told Anwar they had seen Jamil Gasim, a Yemeni student who
was suspected of links to Al-Qaeda, being bundled aboard the jet by a
group of white men wearing masks. The jet took Gasim to Jordan, since
when he has disappeared. <br><br>
“The entire operation was so mysterious that all persons involved in the
operation, including US troops, were wearing masks,” a source at the
airport told Anwar. <br><br>
On another mission, in January 2002, a Gulfstream was seen at Jakarta
airport to deport Muhammad Saad Iqbal, 24, an Al-Qaeda suspect who was
said by US officials to be an acquaintance of Richard Reid, the British
“shoe-bomber” jailed in America for trying to blow up a flight from Paris
to Miami. <br><br>
An Indonesian official told an American newspaper that Iqbal was “hustled
aboard an unmarked, US-registered Gulfstream . . . and flown to Egypt”,
where almost nothing has been heard of him since. <br><br>
The CIA Gulfstream’s flight logs show it flew from Washington to Cairo,
where it picked up Egyptian security agents, before apparently going on
to Jakarta to take Iqbal to Egypt. <br><br>
Another transfer involved a British citizen. On November 8, 2002, the
Gulfstream took off for Banjul in Gambia. On the same day Wahab Al-Rawi,
a 38-year-old Briton, was among four people arrested at the airport by
local secret police and handed over to interrogators who said they were
“from the US embassy”. <br><br>
Wahab said he had previously been questioned by MI5 because his brother
Basher, an Iraqi national, was an acquaintance of Abu Qatada, the radical
London-based cleric. <br><br>
When Wahab asked the CIA agents for access to the British consul, as
required under the Vienna convention signed by America, the agents are
said to have laughed. “Why do you think you’re here?” one agent said to
Wahab. “It’s your government that tipped us off in the first place.”
Wahab was later released but Basher was sent to Guantanamo and remains
there and has yet to be accused of any specific crime. <br><br>
Some former CIA operatives and human rights campaigners claim the agency
and the Pentagon use a process called “rendition” to send suspects to
countries such as Egypt and Jordan. They are then tortured largely to
gain information for the Americans who, it is alleged, encourage these
countries to use aggressive interrogation methods banned under US law.
<br><br>
Bob Baer, a former CIA operative in the Middle East, said: “If you want a
serious interrogation you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to
be tortured you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear . .
. you send them to Egypt.” <br><br>
Among the countries where prisoners have been sent by America is
Uzbekistan, a close ally and a dictatorship whose secret police are
notorious for their interrogation methods, including the alleged boiling
of prisoners. The Gulfstream made at least seven trips to the Uzbek
capital. <br><br>
The details bolster claims by Craig Murray, the former British
ambassador, that America has sent terrorist suspects from Afghanistan to
Uzbekistan to be interrogated by torture. <br><br>
In a memo, whose disclosure last month contributed to Murray’s removal,
he told Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, that the CIA station chief in
Tashkent had “readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining
intelligence”. <br><br>
The CIA and Premier declined to discuss the allegations over the planes.
The American government, however, denies it is in any way complicit in
torture and says it is actively working to stamp out the practice.<br>
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