NORTH CAROLINA
STOP TORTURE
NOW
PO Box 50345
Raleigh, NC 27650
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contact AT ncstoptorturenow.net
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RECENT NEWS & HEADLINES
Will Johnston County pilots and mechanic become scapegoats for El-Masri kidnapping and torture?
CIA report implicates Smithfield company
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MADRID, MAY 12 – The Audiencia Nacional prosecutor's office has asked judge Ismael Moreno for the arrest of 13 CIA agents, accused in alleged cases of 'extraordinary rendition,' that is, the kidnapping of individuals and their illegal transfer by plane carried out against foreign citizens suspected of terrorist activities, according to reports from El Pais.
Among the cases under inquiry, the accusation of kidnapping, made in October 2006 by German citizen of Lebanese origin, Khaled El-Masri, who was stopped on January 23, 2004 in the Republic of Macedonia and transferred by plane to Afghanistan, where he is said to have been tortured. The plane made a stop at the Spanish airport at Palma, where the real identity of the crew, made up of agents from U.S. intelligence, was hidden.
The prosecutor accuses the 13 CIA agents of the crime of falsification of official documents, considering that the flight by which el-Masri was kidnapped, and his passage through Spain, has been "circumstantially corroborated."
The CIA agents whose arrest is being demanded by the prosecution, and whose names figure in a report by the Guardia Civil are: James Fairing, Jason Franklin, Michael Grady, Lyle Edgar Lumsen III, Eric Mattew Fain, Charles Goldman Bryson, Kirk James Bird, Walter Richard Greensbore, Patricia O'Riley, Jane Payne, James O'Hale, John Richard Deckard and Hector Lorenzo. The agents overnighted in a luxury hotel in Majorca the night before the one in which the plane on which they were travelling, a Boeing 737 marked N313P, flew from Skopje for the alleged kidnapping of El-Masri and his forced transfer to Afghanistan.
The kidnapping and alleged torture of El-Masri are the subject of an inquiry in Germany, where there is a trial under way against CIA agents for these crimes.
As reported by ANSAmed.
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CIA report implicates Smithfield company in torture cases
A Smithfield-based contractor for the CIA is implicated in the al-Nashiri torture case described in the long-anticipated CIA Inspector General’s report (courtesy, ACLU) released August 24.
According to the report, the CIA used mock executions to terrorize detainees and threatened detainees with pistols and electric drills.
Newsweek reported: Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was threatened with a gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. According to the sources, who like others quoted in this article asked not to be named while discussing sensitive information, Nashiri’s interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him. “The purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up,” said one of the sources.
“The role of Aero Contractors in providing planes, pilots, maintenance, and crews for torture missions must be investigated,” said Josh McIntyre, spokesperson for NC Stop Torture Now. “Whether detainees are guilty or innocent, threatening them with power drills is appalling and illegal. By ‘driving the getaway car,’ Aero has been a co-conspirator in horrendous abuses of human rights.”
A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with “imminent death.” North Carolina Stop Torture Now believes that Aero Contractors’ conduct may be part of a criminal conspiracy partially planned and acted upon within the State of North Carolina, and should be subject to prosecution by the State for criminal conspiracy.
Later the same day, Attorney General Eric Holder appointed federal prosecutor John Durham (BBC report) as a special prosecutor to investigate claims of detainee abuse. However, analysts expect (Washington Post) the attorney general to reject or stifle a broad inquiry that could result in possible prosecutions of Justice Department lawyers in the Bush years as well as cabinet officers who developed counter-terrorism policy, and instead to focus on what CIA Director Leon Panetta characterized as "behavior, however rare, that went beyond the formal guidelines ... "
Holder noted in a statement explaining his decision that: " ... the information known to me warrants opening a preliminary review into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations," (emphasis added).
According to U.K.-based journalist Stephen Grey, author of the book Ghost Plane, an Aero Contractors plane was involved in the extraordinary rendition of al-Nashiri. This plane was the Gulfstream jet N379P, the notorious “Guantanamo Express,” which was based at Aero’s headquarters in Smithfield at that time.
Read NCSTN's entire media advisory on the release of the Inspector General's Report.
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