How NC US is involved in Renditions - Announcing Forum

RENDITION is a Torture Flight

photo above credited to the following sites/articles:
Council of Europe Ireland Stop Torture Flights Effort via Dear Kitty blog

World News dot com article Poland Admits Role in CIA Rendition Programme (find this article and related below)

FOR FORUM INFO and other items related to North Carolian USA, please go to this URL HERE for plenty of information and there is a link to a short Video you may want to see called: WEAVING A NET OF ACCOUNTABILITY.

If for any reason you have trouble with link just remember NC Stop Torture Now dot org and also find NC Stop Torture Now easily in Search Engine.

I am also leaving this URL without embedding so you can help get out the word with copy/paste:

http://www.ncstoptorturenow.org

More related items to come soon.

IF you should want to be a part of the statewide, nationwide and international effort to end US Complicity with Renditions, Plz email me, Connie, at newlease7@yahoo.com and also contact NC Stop Torture Now.

Make sure your subject heading is very clear along with your contact information and reason for your interest as well as how you'd like to connect and help support this cause.

I am accepting very few anonymous Comments so unless you want to waste your time, plz make sure your comment is appropriate and you offer your name or group.


CIA rendition
Poland admits role in CIA rendition programme - Warsaw air control service confirms that at least six CIA flights landed at disused military air base in northern Poland in 2003



The control tower of the airport in Szymany, Poland. Poland has admitted a role in a CIA rendition programme. Photograph: AP

The Polish authorities have for the first time admitted their involvement in the CIA's secret programme for the rendition of high-level terrorist suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan, it emerged today.

After years of stonewalling, Warsaw's air control service confirmed that at least six CIA flights had landed at a disused military air base in northern Poland in 2003.

"It is time for the authorities to provide a full accounting of Poland's role in rendition," Adam Bodnar, of the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, said.

"These flight records reinforce the troubling findings of official European inquiries and global human rights groups, showing complicity with CIA abuse across Europe."

For years, European and human rights investigators have believed Poland played a key role in the secret renditions programme, which became a human rights scandal for the George Bush administration.

An extensive Council of Europe investigation in 2007 found that "especially sensitive high-value detainees" were held at a prison facility, rented by the CIA from the Poles, near the Szymany airfield in northern Poland.

The Polish authorities told the investigators they were not aware of flight data that would reveal the traffic in kidnapping.

But following a freedom of information campaign from the Helsinki Foundation and the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative, the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency released flight data showing that at least two of the aircraft used in the CIA operations flew from Kabul and Rabat, in Morocco, to Szymany at least six times between February and September 2003.

"We know that CIA detainees were held in those two locations in the period in question," the campaigners said.

The two aircraft, a Boeing 737 and a Gulfstream V, were US-registered and previously known to be part of the CIA operation.

"In the past, the Polish government denied its involvement in rendition. It failed to provide any of these flight records to previous investigations," the campaigners said.

Analysis of the flight logs also indicated an attempted joint coverup by the CIA and the Polish authorities, with the aviation authorities being told that several of the flights were destined not for Szymany but for Warsaw.

"The CIA filed 'dummy' and false flight plans, or no flight plans at all, for the incoming and outgoing flights of N379P," the campaigners added.

"[The Polish aviation authority] collaborated with the CIA by accepting the task of navigating these disguised flights into and out of Szymany airport without adhering to the requirements of international flight planning regulations.

"The most remarkable aspect is that the Polish government, which maintained for more than four years that no such records existed – or that, if they did, they were untraceable – has now provided an apparently comprehensive list of these landings, compiled and presented in an orderly and coherent fashion."
END article

World news
CIA rendition · CIA · Poland · United States

Letters for publication should be sent to: letters@guardian.co.uk
If you need help using the site: userhelp@guardian.co.uk
Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard:
+44 (0)20 3353 2000

About this article:Close Poland admits role in CIA rendition programme
This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 11.59 GMT on Monday 22 February 2010

More galleries
22 Dec 2009
Lithuanian spy agency set up secret prisons for CIA

11 Sep 2009
Remember 9/11, remember Guantánamo | Andy Worthington

25 Aug 2009
The CIA's post-torture profits | Tim Shorrock

22 Aug 2009
Secret prisons and sovereignty | Bernard Keenan

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
Go to: guardian.co.uk home UK news World news Comment is free blog Newsblog