EU lawmakers allege numerous CIA flights
(AP)
Updated: 2006-04-27 06:50
"We were requested by EU Parliament to make an analysis of the flight routes
for these planes. There may be others," said Jean-Jacques Sauvage, a senior
official of the Brussels-based agency. He said Eurocontrol did not keep track of
who was on the planes.
The report said that on a number of occasions the CIA was clearly responsible
for detaining terror suspects on European territory and transferring them to
countries where they could face torture.
Fava told the AP it was unclear how many people were transferred by the CIA
on undeclared flights. He also said there was no evidence proving complicity by
European officials, but called it unlikely that some governments, such as in
Italy, Bosnia and Sweden, knew nothing about the CIA operations.
He accused the CIA of breaching the Chicago Convention, an international
treaty governing air traffic. It requires aircraft used in military, customs and
police operations to seek special authorization to land in signatory states.
U.S. officials previously said that as of late December, some 100 to 150
people had been seized in "rendition" operations involving detaining terror
suspects in one country and flying them to their home country or another where
they were wanted for a crime or questioning.
The officials, who agreed to discuss the operations only if not quoted by
name, said the action was reserved for people considered by the CIA to be the
most serious terror suspects. But they conceded mistakes had been made and were
being investigated by the CIA's inspector general.
Fava cited as one example of "extraordinary rendition" the case of an
Egyptian cleric, Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, who allegedly was abducted by U.S.
agents on a street in Milan, Italy, in 2003 and returned to his homeland, where
he says he was tortured.
Another case involved German citizen Khalid al-Masri. Documents provided by
Eurocontrol indicated he was taken to Afghanistan in 2004 by a plane that
originated in Algeria and flew via Palma de Mallorca, Spain; Skopje, Macedonia;
and Baghdad, Iraq.
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