[Shadow_Group] Fw: Ghost Planes' Make Suspects Disappear

[Shadow Spook]

Ghost Planes' Make Suspects Disappear


Pentagon has new secret weapon in 'war on terror'



By Christopher Bollyn



There has been a flurry of articles recently in the U.S. press about an
executive jet used by "American intelligence agencies" to transport abducted
"terrorist suspects" for interrogation to third countries that use torture.
The mainstream media, however, largely omits essential details about
"extraordinary rendition," a practice begun during the Clinton
administration, and ignores the legal questions it raises.

The Sunday Times (UK) wrote about the mystery jet, a Gulfstream 5, on Nov.
14, saying it had obtained the logs of some 300 flights showing "the
movements of the Gulfstream 5 leased by agents from the U.S. defense
department and the CIA."

According to the Times, the logs indicate that the U.S. has used the plane
to transport abducted "prisoners" to "countries with poor human rights
records" where they have been turned over to the authorities for "torture by
proxy."

During the past two years, the plane, which "always" departs from
Washington, "has flown to 49 destinations outside America, including the
Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba and other U.S. military bases." Egypt,
Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan are among the foreign
destinations of the "torture jet," which has the registration number N379P.

The Gulfstream made at least seven trips to Uzbekistan, a dictatorship
allied with the United States in the "war on terror," where, the Times
wrote, the "secret police are notorious for their interrogation methods,
including the alleged boiling of prisoners."

"I have come across many cases of rape in front of family members who they
wish to extract information from," Craig Murray, the former British
ambassador to Uzbekistan, said recently on Swedish television. "I have post
mortem photos of a corpse," Murray said. "These show that the person was
boiled to death."

The Washington Post, Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune all recently reported
on the torture jet, but have focused on the phony companies with whom the
plane is registered rather than on the serious crimes it is being used to
commit.

Much of the information about the "torture flights" has come from a Swedish
journalist, Fredrik Laurin, who has produced four television programs about
the kidnapping of two Egyptians from Sweden in December 2001.

The four-part Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts) program about the "enforced
disappearance" of the two Egyptians, Ahmed Agiza, 39, and Muhammad Al Zery,
33, began on Swedish television on May 17, 2004, and can be viewed on-line.
The most important details of the abductions, however, are not found in the
U.S. press.

In the afternoon of Dec. 18, 2001, Ahmed Agiza was picked up by police on
his way home from Swedish lessons in the western Sweden town of Karlstad.
His wife and five children awaited him at home. Meanwhile in Stockholm,
Swedish security police, the SÄPO, arrested Al Zery at his job. The two
Egyptians were then driven to Bromma airport in Stockholm.

Paul Forell, a policeman with 25 years experience, was stationed at the
police station at Bromma airport that night. Forell told Laurin what he
observed:

"First came the security police. . . after five or 10 minutes two Americans
arrived, in civilian suits, and we stood there for a while talking," he
said. The Americans, he said, were about 35 years old, gave their first
names and said they were from the U.S. Embassy.

"Well, then came this group with the arrested men into the station, and
everything went very fast," Forell said. "The arrested men, wearing their
own clothes, were shackled hand and foot."

Asked who brought the men into the station, Forell said: "The Americans. The
Swedish policemen stayed behind in the outer, public premises," he said.
"There were three to four men to each of the arrested." The Americans were
"dressed in jeans and shirts, and wearing black masks."

Forell, a bystander, was the only uniformed policeman. "There was hardly
room for me in my own station," he said.

Laurin described what happened next: The arrested men were placed in the
station's changing-room and, while shackled hand and foot, their clothes
were cut off in pieces. When the men were naked, "suppositories of an
unknown kind were inserted into their rectums."

Dressed in diapers and dark overalls, blindfolded and hooded, the men were
taken to the cars, Laurin reported.

The Gulfstream 5 with the registration N379P, "flying for the U.S.
Department of Defense," waited several hundred yards away, Laurin said.

"One of the prisoners was placed lying on the floor with his hands and feet
cuffed together behind his back. The other was strapped fast in the cabin,
with his hands over his head."

The two arrested Egyptians, about eight Americans and two SÄPO police took
off at 9:49 p.m., Kalla Fakta reported. "When the plane landed in Cairo at 3
a.m., the men were turned over to Egyptian intelligence officers."

"Disguised agents from an elite American military unit, answering directly
to the White House, are allowed to take command on Swedish soil, contrary to
Swedish law. In a secret and brutal operation, two Egyptians who have asylum
in Sweden are kidnapped and brought to Egypt to be tortured," Kalla Fakta
reported. "They are suspected of terrorism, but no evidence is presented."

After two and a half years of torture in an Egyptian prison, Al Zery was
declared innocent and released. Agiza, in a military trial, was sentenced to
25 years in prison.

The Gulfstream 5 has completed at least 72 such operations in more than 30
countries, Laurin reported. And it always follows the same pattern. "After
takeoff from its home base in Smithfield, N.C., it makes a short stop at
Dulles International Airport, close to CIA headquarters and the Pentagon.

"It flies exclusively to countries that are allied with the U.S. in the
fight against terror: Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Uzbekistan and
Pakistan," Kalla Fakta reported, "countries where prisoners are kept and
interrogated, far beyond the reach of American and international courts."

U.S. enforced disappearances from Sweden are nothing new, according to
journalist Sven Anér. More than 10 years ago, on Sept. 28, 1994, nine
Estonian survivors from the Estonia ferry disaster "disappeared" in a
similar manner. The day after the sinking, nine crew members were removed
from the lists of 146 reported survivors as a Gulfstream 4 (Reg. N971L), and
a Boeing 727-200 (Reg. VR-CLM) left Stockholm's Arlanda airport carrying
four and five unregistered passengers each.

Anér has the documents from the airport's archive that show that the fees
for the two airplanes were paid by the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm.

"Enforced disappearance" and torture are "crimes against humanity,"
according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which the
Bush administration opposes.

While inquiries at the Departments of State, Defense and Justice about the
legality of "extraordinary renditions" went unanswered, a March 19, 2004,
memo from Jack L. Goldsmith, assistant attorney general, clearly reveals the
Bush administration's intent to defy international law.




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