CIA used Portuguese airspace for 56 rendition flights
Source: AFP, 24-05-2008
LISBON: A total of 56 flights used by the CIA for transporting prisoners used Portuguese airspace between July 2005 and December 2007, a member of Parliament said Friday. Communist MP Jorge Machado said the figures were contained in a report he had seen from the Transport Ministry to the government, which has previously said it had no proof of illegality. Machado said five of the flights stopped over at the military base of Lajes in the Portugese Azores archipelago, which the United States has used for over 50 years. Machado urged the government to come clean on what it knew, accusing it of passive connivance with the CIA practice of so-called extraordinary rendition, whereby terrorism suspects are flown covertly to a third country or to US-run detention centers. The practice has been strongly criticized in many countries since it began in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US. In February last year the Portuguese judiciary began an investigation into rendition as it concerned Portugal. Lisbon has rejected allegations by the British rights group Reprieve that 94 CIA flights from or to the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, carried more than 700 prisoners through Portuguese airspace between 2002 and 2006.
LISBON: A total of 56 flights used by the CIA for transporting prisoners used Portuguese airspace between July 2005 and December 2007, a member of Parliament said Friday. Communist MP Jorge Machado said the figures were contained in a report he had seen from the Transport Ministry to the government, which has previously said it had no proof of illegality. Machado said five of the flights stopped over at the military base of Lajes in the Portugese Azores archipelago, which the United States has used for over 50 years. Machado urged the government to come clean on what it knew, accusing it of passive connivance with the CIA practice of so-called extraordinary rendition, whereby terrorism suspects are flown covertly to a third country or to US-run detention centers. The practice has been strongly criticized in many countries since it began in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US. In February last year the Portuguese judiciary began an investigation into rendition as it concerned Portugal. Lisbon has rejected allegations by the British rights group Reprieve that 94 CIA flights from or to the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, carried more than 700 prisoners through Portuguese airspace between 2002 and 2006.
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