AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL SUGGESTS CIA USED ROMANIA FOR RENDITION FLIGHTS
Ziua website, Bucharest
5 Apr 06
Excerpt from report by George Damian, “Amnesty International accuses
Romania again in CIA scandal – Amnesty International includes Romania
on list of countries where CIA prison-planes may have landed”,
published by Romanian newspaper Ziua website on 5 April
In its latest report, which Amnesty International launched yesterday,
Romania is mentioned as the destination of at least two flights
made by an aircraft that the CIA has used for rendition flights. In
the report entitled “Below the radar: Secret flights to torture and
‘disappearance'”, Amnesty International says that the Boeing 737-7ET,
call sign N313P-N4476S, was used for at least 396 flights that are
suspected of having shipped CIA detainees.
The flight recordings consulted by Amnesty International indicate
that N313P-N4476S is the aircraft that shipped Khaled el Masri,
a German citizen detained in Macedonia and shipped to Afghanistan,
where he was detained for four months, with US guards, according to
his own statements.
N313P-N4476S has also landed in Romania twice, once in Bucharest and
once in Timisoara.
Human Rights Watch has indicated that N313P-N4476S is the “aircraft
used by the CIA to move several prisoners in and out of Europe,
Afghanistan and the Middle East in 2003 and 2004: it has landed in
Poland and Romania coming directly from Afghanistan.”
Calculations indicate Romania
Muhammad Abdullah al Assad was arrested in Tanzania in 2003 and US
agents took him into custody almost immediately. He was detained
illegally for 21 months and then handed over to the Yemeni authorities.
Studying Assad’s account, Amnesty International has calculated, based
on the time zone and the prayer calendar the detainee observed, that
the detention places were north of the 41st parallel. These are the
countries that are Council of Europe members (and which should not
have accepted that their soils be used for covert detention centres)
in the region: Turkey, Azerbaidjan, Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria,
Albania and Macedonia.
Amnesty International also says in its report that the information
provided by Assad about the flight duration offers indications about
the place where they were detained. The flight to Yemen in May 2005
is described as a non-stop journey of approximately seven hours. The
description of the aircraft indicates a small plane. Considering that
the speed of such aircraft is 250-500 knots, the final flight could
have been 2,600-5,200 kilometres.
The triangulations between this flight and the shorter journeys made
from Afghanistan to their secret destination exclude locations in
Western Europe or the Middle East. If the flight durations indicated by
the detainees are correct, the initial flight from Afghanistan could
have had the following destinations: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey,
Georgia, or the Romanian or Bulgarian coastal areas of the Black
Sea. [passage omitted: background facts on alleged CIA rendition
flights, not concerning Romania]