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Hard Truths in Seanad Via Sweden Via Indymedia Ireland
 national |
anti-war / imperialism |
news report
 Wednesday December 01, 2004 19:36 by as do many other extraordinary rendees
David Norris Kicking up a Righteous Stink
questions questions questions and very very very few Answers ******Readers Please note the interjection from one of Ireland's leading hawks - Terry Leyden. A man who had the audacity to rationalise the Vote which took place on day X in Dail Eireann to allow Ireland to become involved in an illegal war by stating that he had a nephew in the US Military who was deployed to Iraq. This story stinks to high heaven and the Government is playing see no evil hear no evil with it. It is a shame that Primetime or some other mainstream journalists with time and resources do not pursue this story for all it is worth. Basically all of the information that has made it to the media in this country so far on this issue has come from Sweden via the dogged planespotters at Shannon and their use of indymedia as a conduit for any information they have gleaned.
David Norris (and any other TD's or Senators or Journalists in a position to pursue this matter should ask some harder questions of Michael Mc Do Well and Willie 'Doktor' O'Dea. One might be - 'Is there a permanent Central Intelligence Agency presence at Shannon Airport?' - another might be 'Can I get a list of all of the dates on which this plane transited through Shannon?'.*******
The transcript Referred to by Senator Norris in the Seanad excerpt below is here: http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=67678
1 December 2004 - Order of Business:
Mr. Norris: As the Leader and you, a Chathaoirligh, have been so helpful, I would like to ask the Leader if she would again raise the question of the Gulfstream jet in the light of the "Kalla Fakta" television programme broadcast by a Swedish television station on 22 November, which demonstrated that since October 2001, the aeroplane completed 72 operations in over 30 countries. The aeroplane's routes always take the same pattern. After take-off from its home base in Smithfield, North Carolina, it makes a short stop at Dulles Airport in Washington, close to the CIA headquarters. After crossing the Atlantic it makes stops in places-----
An Cathaoirleach: I have been very generous in allowing the Senator to raise this matter every morning.
Mr. Norris: While that is true, if I could just complete this paragraph, it would assist the Leader in raising this question with the Minister for Transport and the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Mr. Leyden: Put him out.
Mr. Norris: Shannon is listed first then Frankfurt and Prague. Thereafter, it flies exclusively to countries with which the United States is allied in its so-called war against terror, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. These are countries where prisoners are kept and interrogated, far beyond the reach of American or international law
An Cathaoirleach: Senator Norris-----
Mr. Norris: These patterns are consistent and are repeated. This is all this aeroplane does.
An Cathaoirleach: I ask the Senator to resume his sea
Mr. Norris: What I have said comes from a direct translation of a summary of a Swedish television programme broadcast last week. I ask the Leader to raise this matter with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Transport.
Mr. Norris: All Members of the House will take the matter I wish to raise seriously. I have asked the Leader on numerous occasions in recent months to provide information about a Gulfstream jet that has been landing at Shannon Airport and last week she kindly furnished me with the information she had succeeded in getting. I read it carefully; it consists of a report from The Sunday Business Post and answers to parliamentary questions in the other House.
These are all matters of public record, but they raise serious questions and do not answer the questions I have been asking. It is clear that the Minister was aware of reports that the aeroplane, N379P, had been involved in extraordinary rendition, namely, kidnapping citizens of other countries and taking them to third locations for torture. He also confirmed he was aware of these reports, and now of course we know that this is the subject of international legal action by one of the victims involved and of a protest by the Swedish Government. He confirmed that the aeroplane had landed 13 times up until the end of 2003. The American authorities have never notified the Minister for Transport or the Department of Transport of these landings. The aircraft got a new registration this year, N8068V, and has used Shannon three times already in 2004.
I would like the Leader to ascertain the reason for this change. It obviously succeeded in one respect - it misled the Minister. He stated on 19 October that the aeroplane had not used Shannon at all in 2004-----
An Cathaoirleach: We cannot debate-----
Mr. Norris: -----but by 24 November he had to acknowledge three landings under the new call sign.
An Cathaoirleach: The Senator cannot debate-----
Mr. Norris: I am not debating. I am asking a question and I want the Leader to get answers to this issue. The Government has repeatedly made a weak case to the effect that it had no information concerning the aircraft being used for these illicit purposes. Eventually it said that the embassy had been told by the United States authorities that it was not used and would not be used in future. Will the Leader ask, in addition to the question I have already put, that we be told what personnel, at what level, gave the embassy these assurances? As a secret covert operation, it is covered by the plausible deniability doctrine, which is part of United States policy. Unless these questions are answered, we could be in a situation whereby a civilian kidnapped somewhere such as JFK, where one of these kidnaps occurred, could, strapped into an aircraft, land on Irish soil on the way to be tortured at some other destination. No Member of this House can regard this with other than the utmost seriousness. It will only be stopped if these questions are asked, or if the Garda Síochána uses its power to board that aircraft every single time it lands at Shannon Airport.
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4Paying For Torture
http://marccooper.typepad.com/marccooper/2004/11/paying_for_tort.html
Chilean President Ricardo Lagos went on national TV last night to officially make public the findings of his national commission on torture conducted during the 17 years of the Pinochet military dictatorship.
Lagos set a new international precedent by saying he will seek congressional approval to pay the 28,000 surviving witness/victims a monthly lifetime pension of about $200 as compensation.
The Pentagon on Tuesday denied that its forces at Guantánamo engaged in torture and said the detainees there, who now number about 550, were treated humanely.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a news conference in Indianapolis on Tuesday, dismissed accusations that the tactics amounted to torture.
"We certainly don't think it's torture," General Myers said before delivering a speech to the Economic Club of Indianapolis, according to the Web site of The Indianapolis Star. "Let's not forget the kind of people we have down there," he said. "These are the people that don't know any moral values."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/01/politics/01gitmo.html?ex=1259643600&en=2dbd5d034edd99fe&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
Gulfstream N379P becomes N8068V: the price of carelessness with flight logs, or notoriety, or just business practice
- Gordon Housworth [ 11/14/2004 - 19:53 ] #
Don't look for tail number N379P if you are seeking a clandestine transporter of enemy combatants to undisclosed locations for Extraordinary Rendition, i.e., delivery of detainees to foreign locations for advanced interrogation. A straightforward open source analysis reveals that N379P is now N8068V, same serial number (581), same owner (Premiere Executive Transport Services Inc.), and one might surmise, the same purpose, (And when someone awakes to the public recognition of this datum, expect it to change again, or change ownership, or contract provider, and possibly the aircraft.)
As long as an airframe remains under US registration, the Federal Aviation Administration's Aircraft Registration Inquiry offers ten useful searches for N-number, Name, Engine, Document Index, Serial Number, Make/Model, Dealer, State & County, Territory & Country, and N-number Availability. For Canada it is Transport Canada's Civil Aircraft Register, for the UK it is the Civil Aviation Authority's G-INFO Database Search. Some nations are not so accurate in their record keeping.
By using the country/state search, I was able to determine that Premiere Executive Transport owned only two aircraft, the Gulfstream-V N8068V, C/N 581, and a Boeing 737, N313P, C/N 33010. Using N-number Availability, I was able to determine that N379P was not now Assigned/Reserved. Most assume that tail numbers are unique, like a license plate, which is true, but they can be changed as well. There are sites that track the changes in tail numbers. N8068V was N379P, and before that, N581GA.
This data base searches come atop the annual efforts of hobbyist plane spotters and some activists around the world who dutifully log and photograph arriving and departing aircraft, thereby creating a wonderful record of aircraft that change more than the tail numbers for repossession, change of ownership, and criminal efforts. Some sites such as PlanePictures.Net, PlaneSpotting Network, JetPhotos.Net, and Airliners.net are quite useful. The latter two were useful in determining that a missing American Airlines Boeing 727 modified as an air tanker that had departed from Luanda, Angola, without permission and disappeared was not going to be used as a terrorist weapon. It was later seen in Conakry, Guinea, resprayed and given a Guinean registration. (Aircraft often disappear in Africa.)
Whereas N379P was logged in Shannon Ireland to later become corroborating data for a two part Swedish documentary (1 and 2), and noted as part of a larger rendition effort (and here), it was not until the G-V's log books came into the journalist hands that the wider scope became clear:
Analysis of the plane's flight plans, covering more than two years, shows that it always departs from Washington DC. It has flown to 49 destinations outside America, including the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba and other US military bases, as well as Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan, Libya and Uzbekistan.
Witnesses have claimed that the suspects are frequently bound, gagged and sedated before being put on board the planes, which do not have special facilities for prisoners but are kitted out with tables for meetings and screens for presentations and in-flight films.
The aircraft type may be the hardest to change given its suitability to the mission. Gulfstream Aerospace's Gulfstream V is an intercontinental corporate transport capable of carrying four crew (two on the flight deck) and eight passengers and fuel reserves at its design cruising speed of 459 Knots over 6500 Nautical Miles in about 14 and a half hours. The G-V is typically equipped with "a crew rest room, a business work station with Satcom, computer and fax, a dining/conference area with seating for four, a three seat couch that converts into a bed, five other reclining seats, two galleys and a restroom fitted with a toilet and shower."
Just the delivery ticket for interrogation in Jordan, torture in Syria, and disappearance in Egypt.
U.S. Says Terrorism Net Must Be Wide
LA Times - December 2, 2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gitmo2dec02,1,5616918.story
Could a "little old lady in Switzerland" who sent a check to an orphanage in Afghanistan be taken into custody if, unbeknownst to her, some of her donation was passed to Al Qaeda terrorists? asked U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green.
"She could," replied Deputy Associate Atty. Gen. Brian Boyle. "Someone's intention is clearly not a factor that would disable detention." It would be up to a newly established military review panel to decide whether to believe her and release her.
Boyle said the military could pick any foreigner who provided support to terrorists or might know of their plans. And the foreigners held on the U.S. naval base in Cuba "have no constitutional rights enforceable in this court," Boyle told the judge.
"That's really shocking," Thomas B. Wilner, attorney for 12 Kuwaiti detainees, told reporters after Green's hearing. "People throughout the world will fear the United States is asserting the power to pick up little old ladies and men who made a mistake."