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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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May 29th,
2007 - Boeing Unit to Face Suit in CIA Seizures |
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Boeing Unit to Face Suit in
CIA Seizures By Caludio Gatti International Herald Tribune May 29, 2007 New York - The American
Civil Liberties Union plans to file a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that a
subsidiary of Boeing aided the Central Intelligence Agency in the forced
transportation of three plaintiffs who say they were captured and flown to
overseas prisons and in some cases tortured. The civil suit is to be
filed in San Jose, California, under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789. This
law specifies that U.S. government agencies and U.S. corporations can be held
responsible for human rights abuses against foreigners resulting from
activities in a foreign country. The legal action against
Jeppesen, a flight-support services unit of Boeing based in San Jose, will
represent a fresh attempt to shed light on a practice known as extraordinary
rendition, under which the CIA arrested, transported and interrogated
terrorist suspects after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United
States. "Evidence points to
Jeppesen as a major player in the extraordinary rendition program," said
Steven Watt, staff lawyer for the ACLU. "European flight logs
identifying Jeppesen reveal that over a four-year period, the company was
actively involved in the provision of flight and logistical support services
to at least 15 aircraft which, European investigations confirm, were used by
the CIA in its program of extraordinary rendition." Watt added, "The
evidence here also points to Jeppesen contracting to profit from
torture." Jeppesen referred any
request for comments to Boeing. Tim Neale, director of communications at
Boeing, declined to respond "because to do so would mean commenting on
the work Jeppesen does for clients under contracts that call for
confidentiality." "It seems to me you are
asking a question about an issue that involves the U.S. government,"
Neale said. "Jeppesen, as with the rest of the Boeing company, operates
in accordance with the laws." Asked about Jeppesen's role
in the rendition program, Mark Mansfield, CIA director of communications,
said, "We don't comment on such matters." Companies like Jeppesen
typically provide flight-support services like weather forecasts, flight
plans, landing permits, overflight exemptions, refueling, ground handling of
the aircraft, catering arrangements, hotel accommodations and payment of
airport fees. An investigation conducted
by an Italian business daily, Il Sole 24 Ore, also independently found
evidence that two of the three plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit and another
individual who was also a victim of an extraordinary rendition were
transported aboard a Gulfstream V and a Boeing 737 with the logistical
support from Jeppesen. The four men were Kassim
Britel, a Moroccan-born Italian citizen; Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of
Lebanese origin who was mistaken for a terrorist and abducted from Macedonia;
an Egyptian who had asked for asylum in Sweden; and an Ethiopian citizen with
resident status in Britain. "Without Jeppesen's
services, the planes would never have been able to make those flights,"
said Francesca Longhi, the Italian lawyer for Britel, one of the plaintiffs
in the ACLU lawsuit. "If Jeppesen hadn't serviced the CIA's Gulfstream
V, my client would never have been illegally deported to Morocco, where he
has endured months of torture and years of illegal detention that is still
going on." Longhi said Jeppesen was
involved in what many legal experts, the British Foreign Office and a special
European Parliament commission consider an illegal act under international
law. Britel was arrested in 2002
in Pakistan, where the authorities claimed that he was traveling on a false
Italian passport, according to Longhi. Britel was handed over to about six
men, Americans he presumes were CIA operatives, who forced him onto of a
Gulfstream V jet, Longhi said. During the nine-hour flight
to Morocco, Longhi said, Britel was kept hooded, with his hands and feet
bound. After landing in Rabat, he was taken to a special jail run by local
intelligence. Eighteen months later, he was tried and convicted on charges of
being a member of a local terrorist cell and for "participating in unauthorized
meetings" - although he had not been in Morocco for five years. Britel, 39, is in Aïn Borja prison,
in Casablanca, serving a nine-year sentence. Longhi said his conviction was
based on a confession that followed weeks of torture. Neither the Moroccan Ministry
of Justice nor the Ministry of Communications, contacted by Il Sole 24 Ore,
answered a request for comment. In Italy, Britel fell under
suspicion in 2001 when a booklet containing a transcript of an Osama Bin
Laden's interview on Al Jazeera television and an electronic file with a
statement of support for the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas
were found in his home near Milan. But last September, the Italian
authorities cleared him of any terrorism charges. "The fact is that
Britel never committed any crime," Longhi said. "Not in Morocco,
not in Italy, not anywhere." Before the CIA began
extraordinary renditions, companies like Jeppesen were in the business of
enabling wealthy people to fly smoothly around the globe. After Sept. 11, 2001,
according to human rights organizations and European investigating
commissions, new customers appeared - charter companies operating planes on
behalf of the CIA. The first documentary
evidence bearing Jeppesen's name was retrieved in June 2005 by the Spanish
Guardia Civil, when it investigated reports in a newspaper, Diario de
Mallorca, of CIA planes flying into local airports. The Spanish authorities
found that four planes - two Boeings and two Gulfstreams - had repeatedly
landed and refueled in Mallorca and that they were serviced by two local
companies on behalf of Jeppesen and Air Routing International. Similar documents were
uncovered in Portugal by a newspaper, Diario de Noticias, which found the
name of Jeppesen in communications related to rendition planes that used the
airports in Porto and Santa Maria de Azores. Jeppesen UK was also named
in British newspapers as the company that arranged for ground support
services to a rendition plane that landed at Glasgow Prestwick Airport in
June 2004. Specific mention of the
Gulfstream V jet that European investigators and Longhi say was used to
transport Britel to Morocco first surfaced in October 2001. On Oct. 23 that
year, at the airport in Karachi, Pakistan, masked men handed an individual to
a group of Americans who had just landed on a Gulfstream V executive jet. Claudio Gatti is an
investigative reporter for Il Sole 24 Ore. External link: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/29/news/rendition.php |