| Story seems to have a life of it's own now. Guess they'll have to hide this jet in the hanger with all the Black Helicopters. EFL |
IT is nicknamed the Guantanamo Bay Express. On long-term lease to the US government, it is understood to fly suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation — a process called "rendition". Former CIA officers and human rights agencies say the prisoners are sent to countries such as Egypt and Jordan where they are tortured for information. | Note the "former CIA officers", can't keep them away from a reporter |
Although the American government denies torture by proxy there have been suggestions that the CIA encourages these countries to use aggressive interrogation methods banned under US law. One former CIA operative was quoted recently as saying: "If you want a serious interrogation you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear you send them to Egypt." | "They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send on of his to the morgue!" |
The aircraft has been seen at military airports from Pakistan to Indonesia and Jordan and on occasions being boarded by hooded and handcuffed passengers. It always departs from Washington DC and has flown to almost 50 destinations outside America including the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Uzbekistan. It has made several stops in the UK, although reportedly with no passengers, and The Herald has learned that at least one was at Prestwick airport on a flight from Amman, Jordan, to Washington. | They're coming to take you away, ha ha, he he, ho ho! |
The white jet was, until earlier this month, owned by Premier Executive Transport Services Inc and according to research by the Washington Post the company's directors exist only on paper. Each has a recently issued social security number and an address which is a post office box. They have the kind of "sterile identities" which intelligence officers have revealed the CIA uses to conceal clandestine activities. The aircraft, which is based at Washington's Dulles airport, carried the number N379P on its tail until earlier this year when it became N8068V. | If this plane is sooooooo secret, why is it based at a commercial field? Hummmm? |
Earlier this month after widespread publicity about its activities in America it became N44982 when it was sold to Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC of Portland. The CIA has a long history of secretly owning airlines and the only officer listed for that company, Leonard T Bayard, has proved as invisible as the previous owners. The prisoner transfers were first reported in May by the Swedish television programme Cold Facts which described how American agents had arrived in Stockholm on the Gulfstream in December 2001 to take two suspected terrorists to Egypt. Witnesses described seeing the prisoners, who wore hoods, handed to US agents. The clothes of the handcuffed prisoners were cut off and they were dressed in nappies covered by orange overalls. They were forcibly given sedatives by suppository. The Gulfstream flew them to Egypt, where two prisoners claimed they were beaten and tortured with electric shocks to their genitals. | Still can't find my nano-violin. |
|