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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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May 8th,
2008 - CIA Flights Haunt Romania |
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By Claudia Cioban Inter Press Service May 8, 2008 Bucharest - Romania has
still not convincingly answered repeated calls from the European Commission
and others to clarify allegations that it hosted CIA detention centres and
that rendition flights passed through its territory. Authoritative investigations
conducted by the Council of Europe, the European Parliament (EP), Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch, as well as numerous journalistic
reports, claim that Romanian air space was transited by flights used for
extraordinary rendition by the CIA (the Central Intelligence Agency of the
U.S.). Some of the investigators,
such as Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty, further maintained that
secret detention facilities run by the CIA - often referred to as "black
sites" - were located in Romania. On Apr. 22, the Romanian
Senate validated by vote the final report of a special parliamentary commission
investigating Romania’s connections with the CIA rendition scheme. The report
denies allegations that CIA detention centres existed in this country, that
civilian flights operated by the U.S. or other states transported, dropped
off or picked up detainees on the territory of Romania, or that Romanian
institutions participated, either actively or through omission or negligence,
in the illegal transport of prisoners through the country. Most of the proof that the
commission says supports these conclusions is classified at the moment. The
European Commission (EC) has repeatedly asked the Romanian government to
provide details of the parliamentary investigation. But, while members of the
Romanian commission say they have called for the declassification of the
documents, Frisco Roscam-Abbing, spokesperson for the EC on matters of
justice, freedom and security, told IPS the EC has not yet received an answer
to its demands. In its report, the Romanian
commission repeatedly states that allegations concerning Romania stem mostly
from media reports and are not founded on sound evidence. "Both (Dick)
Marty reports and the final (EP rapporteur Claudio) Fava report paid
particular attention to Poland and Romania, bringing serious accusations
against our country based on "clues", "opinions",
"probabilities", "extrapolations", "logical
deductions", thus reaching conclusions considered to be "certain",
write the Romanian parliamentarians. But Romanian MEP (Member of
European Parliament) Renate Weber (from the Alliance of Liberal and Democrats
for Europe, ALDE) says questioning the strength of the evidence presented by
Marty and Fava is no defence for Romania. "The parliamentary
commission invoked the claim that those who make the allegations must provide
the evidence, and often accused the Fava and Marty reports of being
unsubstantiated, but they also did not provide access to those documents
which could make such substantiation possible," Weber told IPS.
"These documents must be made available to the European Commission and
Parliament. This is the only way Romania can clear its name in relation to
these allegations." The Romanian report says
that the members of its commission have personally visited the alleged
locations of detention centres, and sought the help of analysts to read
satellite images of those sites. Of particular interest were the Mihail
Kogalniceanu airport and U.S.-run military base in Constanta, next to the
Black Sea. A new building, which could have been used as a "black
site", had been erected in the military sector at Kogalniceanu in the
period detainees were allegedly held in Romania. But the commission concluded
that none of the suspected sites could have been used for the detention of
prisoners. The report further states
that "Romania granted access to any investigators and journalists to the
airport (Kogalniceanu) facilities, as soon as allegations appeared in the
media." Romanian President Traian Basescu had similarly stated that
locations of alleged "black sites" are open for anyone to visit. But Renate Weber says such
statements are cynical. As she explains, "a detention centre needn’t be
a prison built by a contracted company, it can be even a barrack built in the
desert and brought down after 24 hours. "Therefore, from this
point of view, I do not think that all possible investigations regarding the
existence of detention centres in Romania were completed," Weber said. Although it denies prisoners
being transferred through this country, the parliamentary report does
acknowledge that CIA flights passed through Romania. The classified annexes
of the report are said to answer questions posed by Dick Marty regarding 43
such flights, most of them transiting the country between 2003 and 2004. The
publicised part of the report refers to only eight of them. The report mentions N313P
among the planes transiting Romania. According to Amnesty International and
others, this Boeing 737, then owned by Premier Executive Transport, one of the
CIA front companies, carried prisoner Khaled El-Masri from Skopje (Macedonia)
to Kabul (Afghanistan) Jan. 24, 2004. The parliamentary report shows this
plane entered Romania the following day, Jan. 25, en route from Kabul to
Palma de Mallorca (Spain), and stopped to refuel at Baneasa airport in
Bucharest. The same plane had previously transited Romania Sept. 22, 2003,
coming from Szymany (an airport in Poland considered to be a part of the
rendition scheme) and going to Rabat (Morocco). Also passing through Romania
was N379P, a Gulfstream 5 then owned by the same Premier Executive Transport.
According to the parliamentary report, the plane stopped at Baneasa for
refuelling on Oct. 25, 2003, on its way from Prague (the Czech Republic) to
Amman (Jordan). Associated with several documented cases of rendition, N379P
came to be known as the "Guantanamo Bay Express". Two other flights mentioned
in the report made stops at Kogalniceanu airport, close to the U.S. military
base. Romanian authorities deny
having any information regarding passengers aboard any of these flights. Like
most other governments accused of participating in the rendition scheme,
Bucharest invokes the Chicago Convention on International Aviation which
allows civilian flights of the signatory states to transit each other’s
airspace freely, without the national authorities verifying passengers or
cargo unless there are reasons to suspect the convention has been breached.
Being owned and nominally operated by private companies, the CIA flights entered
Romanian air space as civilian flights. Still, Romania’s
responsibility does not end with stating that CIA flights did pass through
this country but that there is no evidence detainees were on board. As
Claudio Fava points out in his report for the European Parliament,
"under the case law of the European Convention of Human Rights…member
states have an obligation to carry out investigations to ascertain whether
their territory and their airspace have been used in the commission of
violations of human rights, by themselves or by third countries with their
necessary direct or indirect cooperation, and that they must take all
legislative measures needed to prevent the recurrence of such violations." External link: http://www.humanrights-geneva.info/CIA-flights-haunt-Romania,3085 |