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Mexico Drug Plane Used For US 'Rendition' Flights

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06/09/2008

Polish prosecutors obtain document showing east European country hosted secret US centre.




MEXICO CITY - A private jet that crash-landed almost one year ago in eastern Mexico carrying 3.3 tons of cocaine had previously been used for CIA "rendition" flights, a newspaper report said here Thursday, citing documents from the United States and the European Parliament.


The plane was carrying Colombian drugs for the fugitive leader of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, when it crash-landed in the Yucatan peninsula on September 24, El Universal reported.


The daily said it had obtained documents from the United States and the European Parliament which "show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer terrorism suspects."


It said the European Parliament was investigating the private Grumman Gulfstream II, registered by the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, for suspected use in CIA "rendition" flights in which prisoners are covertly transfered to a third country or US-run detention centers.


It also said the US Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) logbook registered that the plane had traveled between US territory and the US military base in Guantanamo.


It said the FAA registered its last owner as Clyde O'Connor in Pompano Beach, Florida.


Extraordinary rendition has been harshly criticized since it began in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.


Polish prosecutors get document on secret CIA centre


Polish prosecutors have obtained a document showing the country hosted a secret US centre earlier this decade, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily reported Friday.


The document, seen by sources Gazeta Wyborcza did not name, is a two-page Polish secret service memorandum written in late 2005 or early 2006 following allegations in the US media of secret CIA prisons in ex-communist central European states.


According to Gazeta, the document confirms the existence of a secret CIA centre, but does not explicitly say it served as a prison for terror suspects as has been alleged.


Gazeta also reported the document says the secret centre was set up after a 2002 US-Polish agreement on battling terrorism.


Polish prosecutors recently launched an investigation into the long-running allegations of a secret CIA jail for suspected terror kingpins near Szymany, northeast Poland.


According to Gazeta, the head of the secret services presented the document in 2006 to two ministers from the then conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government as well as to Poland's chief prosecutor during a meeting.


Gazeta reported that former chief prosecutor Janusz Kaczmarek confirmed he met with the ministers but refused to disclose what occurred. The ex-ministers declined to speak with Gazeta.


Polish authorities have consistently rejected claims in a string of media reports and a subsequent Council of Europe investigation that Warsaw allowed the CIA, the US intelligence agency, to run a secret interrogation centre for captured terror suspects in Poland from 2003-2005.


But in a report released in June 2007, Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty claimed the alleged prison was part of a "global spider's web" of detentions and illegal transfers spun out around the world by Washington and its allies.


Marty also claimed that Romania had hosted a similar facility, but authorities there have also flatly denied his accusation.


Both Poland and Romania have become staunch US allies since the collapse of their communist regimes in 1989.


SOURCE: Middle East Online

www.middle-east-online.com/english/features/