A FORMER senior CIA officer has condemned the practice of shuttling detainees from the war on terror to interrogation and torture facilities in the Middle East on flights, some of which pass through Scottish airports.
Robert Baer, one of the CIA's top operatives in the Middle East over the past 25 years, says that if the flights, known as the Guantanamo Express, prove to be carrying detainees, "Britain has the right to intervene . . .
and refuse those flights".
The Gulfstream V and Boeing 737, owned by a CIA front company, have landed at both Prestwick and Glasgow airports on several occasions shuttling to Dulles airport, Washington. The Gulfstream V, former registration N379P later changing to N8068V, has landed on at least 20 occasions since early 2002.
Both aircraft are understood to have been carrying out what the US intelligence service calls "rendition flights."
This is a controversial practice condemned by human rights activists, where prisoners are often snatched in one country and transported to another where they may be tortured contrary to international law, in an attempt to gain information useful in the war against terrorism.
"They are picking up people really with nothing against them, hoping to catch someone because they have no information about these [terrorist] networks, " says Baer.
The prisoner transfers were first reported by Sweden's TV 4 channel last year, when it described how CIA agents arrived in Stockholm on the Gulfstream V to take two suspected terrorists to Egypt.
"The more evidence that comes out, the clearer it is that there's been a stunning failure of accountability, " says lawyer John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.
Baer spent most of his career running agents in the cities of the Middle East before becoming disillusioned with what he saw as political interference.
Explaining how "rendition" absolves the US authorities of responsibility, Baer adds: "It seems OK to arrest someone in say Sweden then send them to Egypt, and say you will ask the Egyptians if they are going to torture them. The Egyptians are of course going to say no, so this is all within the framework of Egyptian law."
In the past six weeks the Boeing 737 with the original registration N313P has passed through Glasgow at least twice.
"It was en route last time to a military base in Libya, " said one unnamed source within the aviation industry.
On another occasion the plane landed en route to Baghdad, but has also visited Afghanistan and Algeria.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article