Russia Involved in Secret CIA Flights — Amnesty International

Created: 06.04.2006 11:48 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 12:01 MSK , 23 hours 39 minutes ago

MosNews

Amnesty International said in its new report that Russia together with many other countries in Europe, Africa and Asia was involved in secret CIA flights transporting prisoners of war and terror suspects.

However, while the organization claims that a number of Eastern European countries used to host CIA prisons, Russia only let a plane carrying prisoners land on its territory once. The report does not give any precise date, but presumably this happened between February 2001 and September 2005.

Amnesty International claims that CIA used planes owned by dummy companies to transfer detainees in violation of international law. Their number is also unknown, but it is estimated that at least “hundreds” of people were secretly detained and interrogated by the CIA.

The report is based primarily on evidence of three men newly freed from jail in Yemen. Their detailed accounts given to Amnesty International suggest they may previously have been held at a secret U.S. prison in Eastern Europe.

Muhammad Bashmilah, Salah Qaru and Muhammad al-Assad spent 13 months in one secret facility before being flown to Yemen in May 2005 and imprisoned there until their release last month.

Amnesty researcher Anne FitzGerald said she believed the new information was significant, even if partly “subjective.” She said two of the men had told her they believed they had been held in Europe when she interviewed them in prison in Yemen last September.

“At the time, no one had ever mentioned the possibility of secret detention in Europe,” she told Reuters. “When the reports from the Washington Post came out in November, it immediately struck me that perhaps these guys were right.”

The U.S. has acknowledged using rendition as a tool in the war on terrorism, but denies allegations that it handed over suspects to countries where they would be tortured.

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/04/06/amnestycia.shtml