The extraordinary story of rendition
Wednesday, 29 November 2006, 11:54
One of the most impressive pieces of investigative journalism in recent years has been the uncovering of the CIA’s post-9/11 programme of extraordinary rendition.
Journalists from all over the world contributed to uncovering the CIA’s programme of kidnapping people and transporting them to countries with records of using torture for interrogation. But much of the credit needs to go to freelance Stephen Grey, whose reporting on the subject was published in may publications including the New Statesman, the Sunday Times, and the New York Times.
But aside from its intrinsic significance, the story is also probably the premier recent example of computer-assisted reporting in British journalism.
Grey uncovered the fleet of CIA-owned aircraft used for rendition by obtaining huge databases of flight logs from the FAA in America, data collected by plane spotters and provided by an aviation-industry source.
He then used Analyst’s Notebook, a sophisticated (and expensive) piece of software normally used by police and intelligence agencies, to cross-reference the thousands of individual flights with details gleaned from the anecdotes told by the handful of prisoners who had emerged from the rendition programme to tell their tales of being kidnapped, bundled aboard luxurious business jets and taken to countries in the middle east to be tortured.
This is the sort of skillset that journalists will increasingly need to do extraordinary investigative stories in a society where public records come by the gigabyte on DVDs rather than as a stack of photocopies leaked in a brown envelope.
Grey’s new book on the subject, Ghost Plane, is compelling reading, and includes a few pages on his methodology. The dataset he used is now available on the book’s web site. The public version was developed with help from Kim Stenbryggen and Tommy Kaas of the Danish International Center for Analytical Reporting.
Grey will be at the Frontline Club in London on Friday evening to talk about his work; go if you can.
Channel 4 reports that tomorrow’s New Statesman will report a leaked Foreign Office letter that indicates that the UK government was informed about the use of British airspace for so-called “extraordinary rendition” flights by the CIA.
Update: The story is now online. Comments Jan 18, '06
SNP foreign affairs spokesman Angus Robertson MP has released a dossier of CIA flights that landed at airports in Scotland. Comments Jan 18, '06
CIA flights entered Swiss airspace
Sunday, 11 December 2005, 12:33
Now they don’t even need to land to raise eyebrows. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports that “a small jet chartered by the CIA has flown over Switzerland 19 times since the start of 2003”.
The flights included one on 17 February 2003, the day that Abu Omar was allegedly flown from Italy to Germany during his “extraordinary rendition ” to Egypt:
The Federal Civil Aviation Office has confirmed that on February 17, 2003 a Learjet Model LJ-35, using the call sign “SPAR 92”, twice flew over Swiss air space — from Aviano to Ramstein and back again.
SPAR is short for Special Air Resources, a military airlift service that uses Learjets and other executive-style jets to transport senior military officers and civilian VIPs.
Meanwhile the Malta Independent continues to follow the comings and goings of the suspect flights in Malta:
This week another landing in Malta has surfaced with reports and sightings evidencing the presence of a De Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter in Malta between 2 and 3 August 2005. Plane spotters capturing images of the aircraft at Malta International Airport remark on the unusual blade antennae on its upper fuselage.
This newspaper has also confirmed stopovers in Malta by a Lockheed L-100 Hercules with tail number N8213G on 31 March and on 25 August 2004, a Boeing 737 with tail number N313P 6 December 2003 and a Gulfstream jet with tail number N227SV on 17 December 2004.
It seems planespotting has become a respectable journalistic enterprise.
More evidence of CIA flights at UK airports
Wednesday, 7 December 2005, 13:22
The Scotsman reports on Danish government documents that provide new evidence of that CIA planes stopped over at airports in Scotland:
At least 176 flights into or out of Scotland have already been logged by aircraft owned or run by the CIA. The airfields involved include Glasgow, Prestwick, Edinburgh, Leuchars, Wick and Inverness. The new documents also show CIA flights which passed through Danish airspace en route between Scotland and Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
…
The new flight documents seen by The Scotsman were produced in response to a request from a Danish MP, Frank Aaen, who wrote to the foreign minister Per Stig Moeller in August requesting the flight plans for all suspected CIA flights passing through Danish airspace. The foreign minister’s reply revealed 12 of the 14 flights made by CIA plane N379P through Danish airspace originated in, or were bound for, Scotland.
The plane, a Gulfstream V turbojet, travelled on 12 separate occasions to destinations including Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, countries with notorious human rights records and where CIA agents are suspected to have taken terror suspects for questioning outside the controls of international law. The Danish government has since banned CIA flights from the country’s airspace.
The flight plans record the arrival of a flight in Glasgow from Uzbekistan on 14 December, 2001.
Four days later, the same plane landed in Sweden, where, in a case that was extensively documented by Swedish media, two Egyptian terror suspects, Muhammed al-Zery and Ahmed Agiza, were arrested and deported to Egypt for questioning, where both claim to have been tortured.
According to the Danish documents, another suspected CIA plane left Prestwick on 7 February, 2005, passing through Danish airspace en route for Baghdad.
European governments’s knowledge — and possible acquiescence — in the rendition programme is rightly high on the agenda with Condoleezza Rice in Europe facing questions about the flights.
With the ACLU suing CIA on behalf of the wrongly abducted German citizen Khaled al-Masri, A Fistful of Europe asks exactly the right question about the German government: “What did Schily know, and when did he know it?”
The Washington Post certainly suggests the former German interior minister he knew quite a lot about al-Masri’s case as early as May 2004.
Exploring an alleged CIA ‘black site’
Sunday, 4 December 2005, 14:59
The Associated Press was allowed to roam around Michail Kogalniceau Air Base in Romania, one of the locations suspsected of hosting the alleged secret CIA detention facilities in Europe.
The Pentagon and Romanian authorities deny the base ever hosted so-called “black sites”:
But the compound — heavily used by American forces to transport troops and equipment to Afghanistan and Iraq and scheduled to be handed over to the U.S. military early next year — is under increasing scrutiny.
Last month, Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty — leading an investigation by the Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights watchdog — said he was trying to acquire past satellite images of the base as well as Poland’s Szczytno-Szymany airport. Both airfields, Human Rights Watch has alleged, were likely sites for clandestine CIA prisons.
Ioan Mircea Pascu, Romania’s defense minister in 2001-2004, said that parts of Mihail Kogalniceanu were off-limits to Romanian authorities, and the country’s main intelligence agency said it has no jurisdiction there.
Pascu said he couldn’t determine whether prisoners were ever held at the installation, but he conceded that planes flying captives to the prison on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, might have made stopovers in Romania.
Romanian President Traian Basescu said U.S. officials never asked his nation to host a so-called “black site” prison. The Defense Ministry said it was unaware of any such site, and Foreign Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu said there was “nothing in our dossier” or in documents from the previous government ousted last year.
The U.S. Defense Department “did not and does not detain enemy combatants in Romania,” a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, said.
Meanwhile, there were questions in the European Parliament about CIA flights that landed in Malta in 2003.
CIA agent claims Rome knew of rendition
Thursday, 1 December 2005, 15:00
The lawyer for one of the 22 CIA agents wanted in Italy for the kidnapping of terror suspect Abu Omar has claimed the Italian government knew about the “extraordinary rendition” operation.
A lawyer challenging the arrest warrant on Robert Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Milan, said his client’s actions had had “explicit, or at least implicit authorisation from the Italian government.”
In her first appeal, Lady’s lawyer Daria Pesce, claimed he was innocent or “only following orders” and was occupying the role of consul at the time, giving him “diplomatic immunity” which also covered him for “special missions”. However, this argument was rejected by the judge, who decreed that immunity does not cover “serious crimes like kidnapping”. State secrets, he argued, protect “the security of Italian democracy” and not “actions carried out by foreign operatives”.
The Italian government and intelligence service SISMI have always denied knowledge of the operation to capture Abu Omar. However, Lady’s lawyer stated twice in his defence that “Lady, in his consular role as intelligence supervisor, undoubtedly enjoyed the authorisation of the US government in agreement with the political authorities of the Italian state” and this “Italian approval” was “indispensible” for a “special mission sent by the United States”.
Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper speculated on Wednesday that Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi could soon find himself forced to make a difficult choice: “Turn the whole affair into a state secret, thereby admitting that Palazzo Chigi [the Prime Minister’s office] knew, or alternatively, hand over to the Milan prosecutor’s office the names of those who authorised or kept quiet about the kidnapping of Abu Omar.”
Given that EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini this week threatened “serious consequences” — including suspension of voting rights in the Council of Ministers — for EU member states complicit in operating alleged “black site” prisons, he is likely to also take a dim view on EU governments participating in “extraordinary rendition”. Berlusconi may have had his decision forced upon him.
The Milan judge rejected Lady’s claim of diplomatic immunity. A very interesting trial is about to unfold.
Black sites investigator hopes for Senate leak
Monday, 28 November 2005, 08:40
UPDATED
Swiss Senator Dick Marty hasasked US Senator John Kerry to be informed of any future report on alleged secret CIA detention facilities in Europe, according to the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel:
The Council of Europe’s investigator already submitted a discreet request to the office of Democratic Senator John Kerry, who proposed the amendment, asking for information on the outcome of the report. Meanwhile, however, Marty can at least look forward to receiving informal help. In light of the heated debate over torture in Washington, the prospects of keeping the highly confidential report under wraps are slim.
The Washington Post reported that a network of secret CIA detention centres included facilities in Eastern Europe. Marty is investigating the claims for the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, while Kerry led the American Senate’s call for the Bush administration to issue a report on the “black sites”.
A leak may be necessary, because Marty is pessimistic about cooperation from the Bush administration, according to Reuters:
“It doesn’t seem like the U.S. government is helping us in this case,” said Marty …
“They can’t confirm or deny. They say they are at war, so it will be difficult to obtain information from their side,” he told reporters on Friday.
“It’s a pity , because a certain transparency would be to the advantage of everybody, including the U.S.”
Marty has so far found no evidence of “black sites” in Europe, but is investigating 31 alleged “extraordinary rendition” flights that landed in Europe. He has asked Eurosat for satellite imagry of sites in Poland and Romania and wants the air-traffic control body Eurocontrol to hand over records of the 31 planes’ movements.
The Handelsblatt reported that CIA sources had confirmed the existance of two secret prisons in Poland and Romania. There were additional sites in other European countries, the sources told the German business daily. Former Romanian president Ion Iliescu denied any involvement of his government in dentention facilities at Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, which were used by the US military during the Afghanistand and Iraq campaigns.
In addition, the former president said the CIA secret prisons issue is nothing more than a “diversion”. “It is an American dispute and Romania is one of the collateral victims. The U.S. and Romania authorities have never talked about this issue,” said Iliescu.
He also said that if the prisons exist, it means they were build without the authorities’ knowledge. “However, this possibility should not theoretically exist,” added Iliescu.
Handelsblatt also reported that CIA is still using European airports for stop-overs for its “extraordinary rendition” flights. CIA flights landed in the airbase at Ramstein and at Frankfurt airport, the paper reported, citing a high-ranking CIA official. Over the weekend, the Berliner Zeitung reported that at CIA flights have landed in Europe at least 15 times since the beginning of 2005.
The issue is also not going away in other European countries.
(more…)
Italy may try CIA agents in absentia
Wednesday, 23 November 2005, 12:35
The Italian prosecutor dealing with the case of the 22 CIA agents accused of kidnapping Abu Omar in an “extraordinary rendition” operation may seek to put them on trial in absentia.
Speaking to the Chicago Tribune at an anti-terrorism conference in New York last week, Armando Spataro said he had asked the Italian justice minister, Roberto Castelli, to request the extradition of the 22 agents for whom Italy has issued arrest warrents, but also said that he would proceed with the trial even if the United States refuses to hand them over:
To convene a kidnapping trial Spataro would need only the permission of Milan Judge Chiara Nobili, who has weighed the evidence against the 22 CIA operatives in approving the warrants for their arrest.
According to Spataro, a defendant convicted in absentia would be subject to arrest and extradition in any of the 184 countries that belong to Interpol, the international police organization.
The accused organizer of the kidnapping, Robert Seldon Lady, identified in one of the arrest warrants as the “CIA superintendent” in Milan at the time the abduction was carried out, is believed to be living in Florida.
Lady, who retired from the CIA in 2003, has retained Milan attorney Daria Pesce to represent him. In a telephone interview Tuesday, Pesce said that if her client were to be convicted, “then he cannot come in Europe or any Interpol country except the United States, which would not extradite a U.S. citizen.”
…
Judge Nobili noted that the abduction was conducted by “foreign citizens” without the approval of any “Italian authority” and that at the time he disappeared Abu Omar was under close investigation by anti-terrorist police in Milan.
She called the abduction “a most serious assault against the authority of the Italian State and of international treaties on such matters.”
It may happen this way because the justice minster is not exactly sympathetic to the case:
Castelli, the Italian justice minister, was quoted Tuesday by the Italian news service AGI as calling Spataro a “left-wing militant” and said he is examining the extradition request “to understand if the charge against the Americans is groundless or if it was linked to an anti-American feeling which is common to our Left.”
Spataro replied that Castelli “not only is ignorant of my personal love for American country and culture, but he forgets that another deputy chief prosecutor and the general prosecutor also signed” the extradition request, which was approved by Judge Nobili.
“Are (we) all anti-American people?” asked Spataro, who began his career in the 1970s by prosecuting the left-wing terrorist group the Red Brigades after his predecessor was assassinated by another leftist organization.
British and European MPs want answers on CIA renditions
Wednesday, 23 November 2005, 01:51
A new cross-party committee of backbench MPs will investigate the UK’s role in the CIA’s &;dquo;extraordinary renditons” flights, the Guardian reports today.
Andrew Tyrie (Conservative), Sir Menzies Campbell (Lib Dem) and Foreign Office minister Chris Mullin (Labour) are leading the effort.
While the UK government is strangely silent on CIA flights stopping over on its own soil, other European countries are more concerned about the practice, leading to rather strange situation reported by the Associated Press:
Britain has agreed to write to the United States on behalf of the European Union requesting clarification of reports of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, a diplomat said Tuesday.
Britain, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, was asked by several nations including Finland and the Netherlands to write the letter during a EU foreign ministers meeting Monday, the European diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (which, contrary to some headlines, is not an EU body despite confusingly using the same flag) is also looking into CIA rendition flights and their connection to the alleged CIA “black site” prisons in Eastern Europe.
Swiss liberal senator Dick Marty, who is leading the COE parliamentarians’ investigation, says that he has no proof of the existance of the “black sites”, but is investigating 31 flights that landed in Europe and seeking satellite images of sites in Romania and Poland.
CIA flights landed on Med islands
Monday, 21 November 2005, 17:20
With (most) European countries increasingly concerned about their airspace being used by CIA flights linked to “extraordinary rendition” operations, newspapers in Malta and Cyprus today noted that some of the CIA flights made stopovers in those island nations.
Meanwhile, Swedish foreign minister Laila Freivalds has dismissed the allegation that extraordinary rendition flights landed in Sweden. Interesting — if only because the whole renditions story owes a lot to the investigation into a case in that country by television journalist Fredrik Laurin, and because the Swedish government is supposed to be running an investigation of the matter.
A plane linked to the renditions programme yesterday flew from Iceland to the United States via Newfoundland in Canada. The plane, a turboprop with the number N196D landed at Johnston County Airport in Smithfield, North Carolina.
Britain alone in indifference to CIA flights
Friday, 18 November 2005, 20:48
Iceland and Sweden have joined the growing list of European countries that want to know whether the CIA used their airports during “extraordinary rendition” operations.
Denmark has already closed its airspace to such flights. Italy and Germany are seeking CIA agents in connection with with the rendition of Abu Omar. In Spain, police are investigating flights that landed in Mallorca.
Norway also has a criminal investigation underway and a German intelligence source told the Herald that Austria had on one occasion scambled fighters in intercept an unauthorised CIA flight.
Britain is increasingly isolated in Europe on the issue. The Guardian established that British airports were used in CIA flights, and police in Scotland are investigating, but the UK government appears to have no problem with Airstrip One being a hub for the alleged “torture flights”.
The European Commission wants to know more about the alleged CIA “black sites” in Eastern Europe.
Now Spain seeks CIA renditions probe
Tuesday, 15 November 2005, 00:55
Spain is joining the growing list of European countries that are investigating CIA “extraordinary renditions” on their territory.
Spanish police have opened a criminal investigation into the frequent stopovers by aircraft linked to renditions on the Spanish island of Majorca.
Italy and Germany are already seeking to arrest CIA agents involved in one rendition operation that allegedly began with a kidnapping on a street in Milan.
(Via War and Piece)
Germany joins Italian probe into CIA rendition
Monday, 14 November 2005, 01:44
German authorities have joined the Italian investigation into the apparent “extraordinary rendition” of an Egyptian cleric by the CIA, Der Spiegel reports.
Italian prosecutors have already issued warrents for the arrest of 22 CIA agents in the kidnapping of Abu Omar in Milan in 2003. Now German prosecutors are seeking the CIA agents who transferred the kidnapped Egyptian between two aircraft at the US airbase in Ramstein Germany.
At around 2030 on 17 Februar 2003, German prosecutors say, Omar was moved from the Learjet that had taken him from Aviano in Italy to Ramstein onto a Gulfstream that flew him on to Cairo.
