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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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December 5th,
2008 - Rice Dodges Questions on CIA Flights in Denmark News article from the Associated
Press News article from Inter Press
Service |
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Rice Dodges Questions
on CIA Flights in Denmark From the Associated Press December 5, 2008 Copenhagen, Denmark -
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday the United States has
respected Danish sovereignty but she refused to deny that suspected CIA
prisoner planes had flown over Denmark. A Danish television reporter
asked Rice to comment on a Danish government commission's report that was
unable to conclude whether Danish air space was used in the secretive
rendition program. "We have respected
Danish sovereignty and will continue to do so, and I have given to the
(Danish) foreign minister a guarantee, assurances how we will deal with these
issues in the future," Rice said. When the reporter asked
whether that meant there had been no CIA rendition flights through Danish air
space, Rice sidestepped the question. "I have given a
commitment to the foreign minister about the future, and I have said that we
will respect Danish sovereignty," she said. The U.S. program of
so-called extraordinary renditions involved capturing suspected terrorists on
foreign soil and transporting them elsewhere, sometimes to countries with
questionable human rights records. Danish Foreign Minister Per
Stig Moeller has said previously that Rice assured him no prisoner flights
would go through Danish airspace without approval from Danish authorities. In 2005, the Danish
government confirmed that at least 14 flights by aircraft suspected of being
used in the CIA program entered Danish airspace since 2001, but said it was
not clear whether any prisoners were on board. External link: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/12/05/europe/EU-Denmark-CIA-Flights.php Scandal over
CIA “Renditions” Flights Revived By Mario de Queiroz Inter Press Service December 5, 2008 Lisbon - Portuguese European
Parliament member Ana Gomes will ask the EU legislative body to restart the
debate on stopovers in EU territory by secret CIA flights carrying prisoners
captured in Afghanistan. The Portuguese socialist
deputy became known for her active role in the European Parliament’s
temporary committee on CIA flights and prisoner renditions (TDIP), set up to
report on the use of EU airspace and airport facilities for the
transportation of terror suspects to third countries for interrogation (known
as "extraordinary renditions") between 2001 and 2005. Following two years of
investigations which concluded last January, the committee reported that 336
stopovers had taken place in Germany, 170 in the United Kingdom, 147 in
Ireland, 91 in Portugal, 68 in Spain, 64 in Greece, 57 in Cyprus and 46 in
Italy, and issued recommendations to the EU. The committee lamented that
it was not possible to verify the existence of secret detention centres in
Poland, due to the Polish government’s lack of cooperation in the
investigation, which according to the chairman of the committee, conservative
Portuguese deputy Carlos Coelho, "fuelled suspicions." Among the main
recommendations was a request to the European Commission, the EU executive
body, to launch an "independent investigation" into the possibility
that any of its member states violated human rights and fundamental freedoms
by cooperating with the CIA. If found guilty, member
states would face possible sanctions outlined in the EU treaty. Unlike Gomes’ previous
requests, the latest one has found echo among politicians of the governing
Socialist Party, led by Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates. Socialist
officials want to question Foreign Minister Luis Amado on CIA flights
authorised to pass through Portugal. Instead of joining the
pro-U.S. voices in the party hostile to Gomes, former justice minister Jose
Vera Jardim and former labour minister Paulo Pedroso are pressuring the
executive to clarify whether any contacts took place between Lisbon and
Washington, with a view to allowing CIA flights to pass through Portuguese
territory. The deputies, both prominent
figures within the ranks of the Socialist Party, asked the foreign minister
if he had launched, or planned to launch, an inquiry into possible contacts
between Portugal and the U.S. similar to those reported by the newspaper El
País with regard to Spain. Citing an official document,
the influential Spanish paper once again reported, in its Dec. 1 edition,
that former conservative prime minister Jose Maria Aznar (1996-2004)
authorised the stopover in Spanish airports of rendition flights headed for
Guantanamo. The daily had previously
reported that Portugal gave the go-ahead to CIA flights. Deputy Gomes had
made the same accusation, in an interview with IPS. Amado has been asked by Vera
Jardim and Pedroso to shed light on the possibility of Portuguese and U.S.
authorities having established contacts similar to those reported by El Pais,
and on whether or not such conversations were documented. The document leaked by El
País dates back to January 2002, when Portugal was governed by the now United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres. Later that year
Guterres was replaced by Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, the current president of
the European Commission, who headed the Portuguese cabinet until June 2004. Portugal’s foreign minister
reacted by denying knowledge of "any official document in Portugal,
whether in the Defense or Foreign Affairs ministry archives, that would
compromise any previous cabinet on this matter." Amado has urged critics to
"patiently await results," pointing to the ongoing "process in
the Attorney General’s Office, which is free to investigate and access
information." The inquiry began in January
2007 when, following an accusation by Gomes, Attorney General Fernando Jose
Pinto Monteiro ordered an investigation into alleged illegalities committed
by Portuguese governments. Asked by IPS to comment on
the reasons behind her request to spark an investigation affecting a
government headed by her own party, Gomes said it was the prime minister’s
lack of substantive support in cooperating with the investigation that
prompted her to submit "documents with relevant information" to
Pinto Monteiro. She added that CIA flights
"not only passed through Portugal, because they came from Spain and
Italy, and the European Parliament also investigated Germany, Sweden and
Britain," where, unlike in Portugal, there were no "attempts to
obstruct the investigation." The European Parliament and
human rights groups have accused Portugal of allowing suspicious plane
stopovers in the Porto airport in northern Portugal, and in the Azores
islands in the Atlantic, where the U.S. air base of Lajes lies halfway
between Europe and North America. Most U.S. military flights
were allowed by Portugal in the spirit of the Lajes agreement. However,
stopovers by Saudi, Kuwaiti, French and British planes remain shrouded in
mystery. Gomes points a finger at the
slow pace of investigations, which she said was caused by an "aim to
conceal. Many governments share this approach, centred on Durao Barroso’s
attitude to silence it in the name of the alliance with the U.S. "It’s unacceptable for
a state to obstruct the quest for truth in a case involving murder, torture,
kidnapping and other human rights violations," added the European
Parliament deputy. The Attorney General’s
Office investigation should clarify whether the Lajes base was used by U.S.
forces as an illegal detention centre for terror suspects seized mainly in
Afghanistan and Pakistan in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks on
Washington and New York. "The team of European
deputies engaged in this matter will not give up. We will push for a public
debate and we want to know with how many of the European Parliament’s
recommendations the 27 member states have complied with," said Gomes. El País claimed Washington
had duly informed Portugal, Italy and Turkey of the CIA flights, and Gomes
said "they were obviously notified." Noting recent changes in the
world, Gomes called on "EU members, including Portugal, to decide how
they will help the next U.S. administration, led by (Barack) Obama, to close
Guantanamo." External link: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45008 No documents
exist relating to alleged CIA flights, says Gov’t From the Portugal News December 5, 2008 Foreign Minister Luís Amado
said this week no documents exist in Portugal to prove the current Lisbon
Government, or previous ones, knew about illegal United States transport flights
of terrorist suspects through national territory. After a meeting of NATO
foreign ministers, Luís Amado responded to reporters’ questions on weekend
reports in Spanish media that secret documents exist to show the US had
requested permission for CIA rendition flights to use Spanish airspace, the
Lusa News Agency wrote this week. Spanish daily EL Pais
reported at the start of the week that Portugal was among several countries
notified its territory was being used for clandestine CIA prisoner flights. But Portugal’s top diplomat
noted the source cited by El Pais “is a Spanish document and the reference to
Portugal is made by the journalist and not by the document in question”,
denying the existence of similar incriminating documents in Portuguese state archives. “I have no further
information and add I have no knowledge of any document in Portugal in either
the archives of the foreign or defense ministries to compromise in this area
any of the governments in office in Portugal up to the present.” Portugal’s Attorney
General’s office is heading an investigation into the alleged CIA flights
through Portugal and all must “calmly wait fort the results of this inquiry,”
added Minister Amado. Earlier this year, British
rights group Reprieve charged that the United States could not have illegally
transported more than seven hundred terrorist suspects to Guantanamo between
2002 and 2006 “without the help of Portugal”, which means that around 95
percent of all prisoners at the base passed through Portugal. The report, entitled
‘Journey of Death’ concluded that “Portuguese territory and airspace had been
used to transfer over 700 prisoners to torture and illegal imprisonment in
Guantanamo Bay.” The organisation further
states that 728 of the 774 prisoners processed into Guantanamo were
transported through Portuguese jurisdiction. The report was compiled by
comparing flight logs obtained from Portuguese authorities, information from
the US Department of Defence showing dates of arrival of prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay, and unclassified testimony from many of the prisoners
themselves. In the report, Reprieve said
it has detailed for the first time the names of these prisoners and their
stories. Flight logs it says it
obtained from Portuguese authorities in 2006 reveal that on at least 94
occasions aircraft crossed Portuguese airspace en route to or from Guantanamo
Bay between 2002-2006. On at least six occasions rendition aircraft flew
directly from Lajes in the Azores to Guantanamo, Reprieve claims. At the time, Prime Minister
José Sócrates washed his hands of any wrong-doing in Parliament. “I reject and absolutely
refute the baseless accusation against our country that Portugal helped or
backed any transport of prisoners” by the US CIA, Sócrates said. “The Portuguese Government
was never consulted on the possibility or authorised” the alleged
extraordinary rendition flights through national airports or airspace. Prime Minister Sócrates
added that he had consulted every cabinet member “with responsibilities” in this
area and that the Foreign Ministry had “no record that could give the idea”
that rendition flights could have passed through Portugal. “We base our foreign policy
on the rules of international law and I’m particularly offended with a report
that seeks to place Portugal at the centre of or on the path of infamy”, he
was quoted by the Lusa News Agency as telling the legislature. But Reprieve has insisted on
Portugal’s guilt, and in a statement it demanded that “Portugal carry out a
public and exhaustive inquiry and get to the bottom of these violations of
international law”. In London, Clive Stafford
Smith, the founder and legal director of Reprieve, said earlier this year
Portugal’s involvement was crucial. “The Portuguese Government
needs to do some serious soul-searching. None of these prisoners could have
reached Guantanamo without Portuguese complicity”, he said. External link: http://www.the-news.net/cgi-bin/google.pl?id=988-7 |