Jan. 31, 2007 - Anti Torture Activists - Call for Open Hearings on Rendition

Jan. 31, 2007 - Germany Orders Arrests RE CIA Kidnapping and Torture - 3 Suspects in North Carolina Indicted

3 North Carolinians Indicted in CIA Kidnapping/Torture case involving Aero Contractors out of Lenoir and Johnson Counties

Germany Orders 13 Arrests Over Alleged CIA Kidnapping (Update2)

By Patrick Donahue

Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- A court in Munich ordered the arrest of 13 people for the alleged abduction of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who says he was seized by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and taken to a secret prison in Afghanistan.

Evidence collected by prosecutors yielded ``clearly identifiable'' individuals who may be undercover CIA agents...

... most of the suspects live in North Carolina and three of them have refused to address the allegations when confronted. NDR said the crew operated out of Majorca and worked for Aero Contractors, the successor of the CIA's former secret airline Air America.

El-Masri flown to Baghdad and then Kabul to be "interrogated":

Flight to torture: where abuse is contracted out

Khalid el-Masri, a German national whose story is confirmed by German officials, says he was arrested on the Macedonian border on New Year’s Eve, 2003. After being held for three weeks by Macedonian officials who pressed him to admit that he was an al- Qaeda member, he was driven to Skopje airport, beaten, stripped, shackled and flown to Baghdad, and then to Kabul.

El-Masri says he woke in a jail cell and was told: “You’re in a country without laws and no one knows you are here.” After being held for five months in solitary confinement, he was flown back to the Balkans last May and dumped on a hillside, where Macedonian border guards returned his passport and cash.

The USA should be a moral beacon to the world.

Governor Easly should order an investigation of the rendition flights from North Carolina's soil, and indeed has been repeatedly asked to do so by a group of state lawmakers and advocacy groups.

Congress should act as well.

Ultimately it is up to all of us, the people, to hold our public servants accountable.

Currently torture flights are staged out of Lenoir and Johnson County airports, subsidized by taxpayer dollars.

A grassroots campaign has been underway in North Carolina since November 2005 to persuade state and Johnston County officials to investigate Aero Contractors’ participation in CIA-sponsored renditions. To date, Governor Easley, the Global TransPark Authority Board, and the Johnston County Board of Commissioners have declined to initiate an investigation.... StopTorture Now website

Your help is needed to stop our airports from being used to shuttle prisioners to torture and non judicial confinement for the CIA.

Take Action:

NCSTN will continue to work until the state complies with its legal requirement. To accomplish this we need your help:

• Contact Governor Easley and request that he stop the State’s hosting of torture flights: Mike Easley, Office of the Governor, 30301 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC, 27699-0301, 919/733-5811, (Fax) 919/733-2120, governor.office@ncmail.net .
• Stop Torture Now Petition! Get people to sign – see www.ncpeaceaction.org
• Ask members of the N.C. General Assembly to call for an SBI investigation. See www.ncleg.net for contact info for General Assembly members.
• Check our website, www.ncstoptorturenow.org, and email stoptortureflights@riseup.net if you want to get news & actions through our listserve.

Oct. 28, 2006 - Oct 28 Small NC Town Faces Big Moral Dilemna

Citizens of the sleepy little town of Smithfield North Carolina now face a tough choice.

Will they demand an investigation into the use of the Smithfield airport to fly "prisoners" out of the country to be tortured - or will they just keep their eyes down and pretend they "know nothing"?

The issue of torture flights out of Smithfield NC has finally reached the pages of the "Smithfield Herald".

Smithfield's dirty secret is out now, and the citizens there have to decide, as people have in other troubled times - will they blindly support torture if ordered by the leader of their country, and will they support the use of their home town to enable torture of other human beings.

Or will they pretend that they don't know, or expect someone else to take a stand for them?

Now that they know about it, what will they do? 

What will the local churches say?

12 lawmakers not of the Smithfield area have called for an investigation, at the behest of the Stop Torture NC group.

Lawmakers call for probe  

Oct 27, 2006 Smithfield Herald.

 

Twelve members of the N.C. House of Representatives have asked the State Bureau of Investigation to probe Smithfield-based Aero Contractors.

 

In a letter to SBI Director Robin Pendergraft, the 12 lawmakers, none of them from Johnston County, claim that Aero, under the direction of the CIA, "has flown persons detained in various countries, including the United States, to other countries." "There,” the letter continued, "the suspects were held incommunicado and tortured, using methods that would not have been legal in the United States...."

 

"But it seems pretty clear that Aero has been involved with the CIA rendition program," Luebke continued. "And if that's the case, then Aero would appear to be in violation of the North Carolina conspiracy statute. That would be something for the Attorney General's Office and the SBI to look into."

 

Co-sponsoring the letter were Reps. Linda Coleman, Deborah Ross and Jennifer Weiss of Wake County; Alma Adams and Earl Jones of Guilford County; Larry Hall of Durham County; Martha Alexander of Mecklenburg County; Melanie Goodwin of Richmond County; Verla Insko of Orange County; William Wainwright of Craven County; and Winkie Wilkins of Person County....

I call them the "Titanium Twelve" for their stronger than steel backbones.

...

Weiss said she and the other House members became involved after anti-torture group Stop Torture Now asked for their help. "I feel that as a representative, it's my obligation to act when there are grave concerns," she said. "Although the Johnston County Airport and Global TransPark are not within my district, they do receive state funds." (Aero also flies out of Global TransPark in Kinston.)

..

Finally, someone in our government has the courage to help the US regain its moral compass.

But not Leo Daughtry, who is a state representative of the Johston County area.

Rep. Leo Daughtry of Smithfield, whose hometown houses Aero's headquarters, said this week he was unaware of his fellow lawmakers' appeal to the SBI. But had he known, the Smithfield lawyer said, he "would not have gotten involved because I don't have any reason to criticize the CIA or whoever it is that is behind such matters."

"I don't know what relevance the General Assembly has toward the CIA," Daughtry said. “The CIA is a federal agency, and the matter of renditions is a federal issue. I see the controversy sort of like the members of the General Assembly being critical of the war in Iraq. While we might be interested to read about it in the newspapers, there's nothing we can do about it."

"When members try to take action like this, it seems to me they are simply politicking," Daughtry said.

Wrong Representative Daughtry.  Politicians tend to avoid making waves if they can. They know how easily people can be blinded by false patriotism to support such horrible things as torture. It takes guts to stand up to torture.

Politicians know, by studying the tragic history of the human race - that normally decent people have easily been persuaded to torture, maim, starve and or kill their own kind, when their leaders have ordered it. Going against those leaders has often been risky and unpopular.

After reading this blog, maybe you will call or email Rep Daughtry and ask him to join the Titanium Twelve Lawmakers in regaining America's moral compass, one town at a time, starting with Smithfield.

Meanwhile, ask your representative to join in the effort to stop torture flights from NC.

Oct. 26, 2006 - Oct 26 Guardian UK: CIA tried to silence EU on torture flights - NC's Aero mentioned again

The Guardian reveals that torture flight pilots (like some from NC's Aero) lived it up in luxury motels after delivering their victims to foreign countries to be tortured. 

One victim described in this article was tortured for 2 years, and then "disappeared" to Guantanimo Bay for as long as US President Bush decides.

CIA tried to silence EU on torture flights

Germany offered access to prisoner in Morocco if it quelled opposition

Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday October 26, 2006
The Guardian

 

The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence EU protests about the human rights record of one of America's key allies in its clandestine torture flights programme, the Guardian can reveal...

More damning evidence - thousands of pilot logs to flood the internet this week:

The CIA used planes of Air America, a group of private companies it secretly owned, and a second company, Aero Contractors. A CIA Gulfstream V jet, frequently used for the secret rendition of prisoners, flew to Diego Garcia, the British Indian Ocean territory where the US has a large base, the book says. Grey plans to publish more than 3,000 logs of the CIA flights on the internet this week...

Oct. 26, 2006 - Oct 24 Raleigh N&O: Book ties Johnston firm to CIA activity - arrests may follow

The mainstream media is now covering the dark shameful secret -

Sleepy small town airports in North Carolina ARE being used to shuttle "prisoners" off to foreign countires to be tortured.

There may be arrest warrants issued to some Johnson County pilot over the most high-profile cases of alleged rendition, involving Khaled El-Masri, a former German car salesman and father of five.

Book ties Johnston firm to CIA activity
A journalist claims the air charter company transported terrorism suspects to other countries for interrogation

 

 

Aero Contractors, a private air charter company based in Johnston County, became the "home of CIA aviation," moving suspected terrorists to countries where they could be more harshly interrogated, according to a new book by freelance journalist Stephen Grey.

But Grey, the author of "Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program," is convinced that publicity about the program and Aero's involvement has forced the charter company to scale back its role....

 

...

Of about 22 planes the book describes as being part of the CIA's fleet, 10 to 15 were based at Aero, Grey said in an interview. The book includes flight plans of two planes in particular, a Gulfstream V and a 737 Boeing Business Jet. The Gulfstream V made frequent stops in Johnston County, where Aero continues to operate.

Oct. 17, 2006 - Oct 17: Which NC Congressmen Voted FOR Torture?

Which NC congressmen voted for the "Military Commissions Act of 2006":

NC-2 Etheridge, Bob [D] ***
NC-5 Foxx, Virginia [R] 
NC-6 Coble, Howard [R] 
NC-7 McIntyre, Mike [D] ***
NC-8 Hayes, Robert [R] 
NC-9 Myrick, Sue [R] 
NC-10 Mchenry, Patrick [R] 
NC-11 Taylor, Charles [R] 

VOTING AGAINST:
NC-1 Butterfield, George [D] 
NC-3 Jones, Walter [R] ***
NC-4 Price, David [D] 
NC-12 Watt, Melvin [D] 
NC-13 Miller, R. [D] 

Record courtesy of http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2006-491

Oct. 17, 2006 - Oct 17: Torture Billboard Aims at Lieberman, Shays, Simmons and Johnson

A billboard along  a Stratford Connecticut highway is getting the attention of citizens and politicians.

A Connecticut statewide interfaith group is telling it like it is - this billboard represents what U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman and Republican Reps. Christopher Shays, Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson really voted for as supporters of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Take a look for yourself - how about a billboard like this in your state?

Religious activists accuse officials of supporting torture

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN
Associated Press Writer

October 17, 2006, 1:31 AM EDT

STRATFORD, Conn. -- Weighing in on Connecticut's hotly contested congressional races, a group of religious activists have unveiled a giant billboard off busy Interstate 95 that accuses four candidates of voting to allow torture.

The billboard in Stratford names Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman and Republican Reps. Christopher Shays, Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson as supporters of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Oct. 15, 2006 - TUE Oct 17 2pm Sen Lindsey Graham at NCSU speaking on Torture, Guantanamo, the Geneva Conventions

Some folks from the Stop Torture Flights group will be at this event to hand out fliers and to get more signatures on the petition.

TUE 10/17.   2pm   Senator Lindsey Graham at NCSU speaking on Torture, Guantanamo, the Geneva Conventions

NCSU, Stewart Theater (2nd Floor Talley Student Center), Raleigh.
Senator Lindsey Graham,  member of the Senate Judiciary and Armed Services Committees and expert on the Geneva Conventions and military justice and will speak about Torture, Guantanamo, the Geneva Conventions.

 

He will share the reasons why he believes that US policy on these issues could endanger our foreign policy goals and our military.

 

What do we do with the occupants of Guantanamo? 

The answers are difficult and Sen. Graham will help us gain a greater understanding of the issues and the solutions.

Oct. 15, 2006 - Oct 12, 06 Hillary Clinton - Torture Ok Sometimes

Ben Smith of the New York Daily News reports on a recent editorial meeting where Hillary Clinton was in attendance:

October 12, 2006  - Clinton Equivocates on Torture

Despite her apparent opposition to torture, Hillary Clinton said in a Daily News editorial board meeting yesterday that the practice is acceptable in some circumstances.

Clinton got a rousing reception from the human rights community, and seemed to take an uncharacteristically bright-line stance, in a recent statement on the Senate floor during the debate over torture. ..

When asked if torture was ok in "ticking time bomb" situations, Clinton said yes:

"In those instances where we have sufficient basis to believe that there is something imminent, yeah, but then we’ve got to have a balance."

What balance? What President to make this decision? So, it all depends on the situation?

Oct. 13, 2006 - US Follows Egypt in Descent to Torture - Torture Flights and Patriot Act Imitate Dictator Ruled Country

The US has decended a slippery slope - we are becoming more and more like the shunned countries ruled by ruthless despots.

• In 2001 we started snatching people off the streets of the world to be tortured
• In 2001 we changed our laws in the example of Egypt in 1981 - to make it easier to snatch, grab and torture US citizens as well. 

A British writer tells how he found out that  the US was flying people out of the country to be tortured.

After that report, see about the eery similiarity between the US's Patriot Act to Egypt's "emergency laws" used to allow torture. Laws that have been in place for 20 years in Egypt.

Tip Off

A new book says that a comment by former CIA director Porter Goss alerted a journalist to the agency’s controversial rendition program.

 

Oct. 12, 2006 - An unsolicited remark from Porter Goss, then chairman House Intelligence Committee, led a British journalist to unravel many of the details of the CIA’s controversial “extraordinary rendition” program, according to a new book. The disclosure of this highly sensitive operation later prompted a major leak investigation that roiled the agency.

British reporter Stephen Grey's new book describes Goss' involvement in "torture flights" - see “Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program,”

The "tip-off" came in 2001

Grey reports that his initial tip-off to what the CIA was doing came during a Dec. 14, 2001, interview he had with Florida Congressman Goss on Capitol Hill about the war on terror. At the time, Grey, a veteran reporter who wrote for The Sunday Times of London, asked the House Intelligence Committee chairman about the prospect that Osama bin Laden might be captured and turned over to the U.S. government.

“It’s called a rendition,” Goss replied. “Do you know that?”

Stop the Press!

Last February Goss told the Senate that a grand jury investigation should to find out who leaked info about the secret CIA prison program:

"It is my aim, and it is my hope, that we will witness a grand-jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information. I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserves nothing less."

Italy and Germany are investigating the CIA's involvement in torturing their citizens.

Italy charges that CIA took an Italian citizen off of the streets of Milan and flew him to Egypt,

a country

Grey estimates in his book that there have been between 100 to 150 CIA renditions under the secret program, some of which have earned global notoriety. Indeed, in Italy prosecutors have filed criminal charges against more than a dozen suspected CIA officers accused of involvement in the rendition of an Islamic militant known as Abu Omar, who was allegedly apprehended off the streets in Milan and flown to Egypt. Prosecutors in Munich are conducting a similar inquiry into the case of Khalid al-Masri, a German citizen who was abducted while on vacation in Macedonia, held and questioned in a secret prison in Afghanistan and later released without explanation.

Egypt is known as the go-to country if you want to torture someone:

Torture 'systematic' in Egypt
...Individuals were being assaulted with "hands, feet, sticks, whips, cables and metal chains, tortured using hot water and electrocuted", as well as being subject to "sexual and immoral assaults". ..

Egypt torture related to "emergency law" instituted in 1981 and extended to 2006:

Egypt has been under emergency law since Islamic militants assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981. The law, renewed in February 2003 for another three years, gives authorities wide powers to arrest, detain and bring civilians before military courts, from which appeals are limited.

Does this "emergency law" sound familiar a fairly new "emergency law" passed by US congress?

Oct. 9, 2006 - NC House Members Call for Investigation of "Torture Taxi" Company

NC-STOP TORTURE NOW

P.O. Box 50345, Raleigh, NC  27650

                                     
MEDIA ADVISORY              Christian Cowger

October 9, 2006                      919/637-7678 (mobile)

House Members Call for Investigation of ‘Torture Taxi’ Company

Oct. 9, 2006 - Sept 10: NC a Link in Torture Chain - Charlotte Observer

Private air service based in state flies captives to CIA secret prisons

From Barbara Zelter of the N.C. Council of Churches in Raleigh:

President Bush admitted last week that we indeed have a secret offshore CIA detention system for suspects in the "war on terror." In a rousing Sept. 6 speech to show we are capturing the culprits, Bush lifted the veil on what many have decried as a way to export torture.

The administration's denial of the use of torture while flying suspects to secret prisons overseas is a story too long buried. Concerned groups have named a North Carolina link to the gimmick known as "extraordinary rendition." A Johnston County airport and Eastern North Carolina's Global TransPark are known to be part of the "torture taxi" system that flies suspects to black-hole prisons far away.

From the Johnston County airport in Smithfield and Global TransPark in Kinston, Aero Contractors has operated as a CIA front. Evidence exists that Aero flights have taken suspects to CIA-run hideaways, where the president now admits such techniques as waterboarding were used to extract confessions. Waterboarding, or pretending to drown a person, is one of the classic torture techniques that the president now says we won't use in our official Department of Defense prisons, like Guantanamo.

Several N.C. organizations have been asking Gov. Mike Easley, the N.C. General Assembly and Global TransPark leaders to have the state SBI examine the Aero situation. Evidence gathered by the N.C. chapters of Code Pink, Peace Action and Stop Torture Now reveals that our tax dollars are being used to provide sites where state and national laws and the Geneva Convention are being broken, through CIA flights from our soil. An Aug. 26 investigation of the facts is at www.consortiumnews.com/2006/082506a.html.

The N.C. Council of Churches has a formal policy statement against the use of torture by our country for any reason. We have become convinced that we must help uncover and stop any N.C. part in delivering human beings for torture.

On Sept. 1 we sent a letter to legislators, the governor and Global TransPark backing the peace groups' request for an SBI investigation into the Aero secret flights. We called on the leaders to: meet with the groups that have requested action by the N.C. SBI, attorney general and office of the governor; investigate the actions of Aero Contractors and the involvement of Global TransPark as regards extraordinary rendition; and end our state's involvement with the system of torture that violates all sense of morality and human rights.

Torture is an unreliable and ineffective tool for extracting solid information. We don't need it. And we harm innocents in using it. Khaled El-Masri is a case in point. A German citizen, he was snatched while on vacation in Macedonia and detained from Dec. 31, 2003, through May 28, 2004, in Macedonia and Afghanistan, where he was in the CIA prison known as the "Salt Pit." An Aero flight out of our state took him there. He was tortured, found to have no information, then dumped in Albania, 40 pounds thinner and a broken man. An innocent man.

We believe the people of North Carolina want no part of this travesty, no matter what our opinions about war and terrorism. As someone said, "If they were dealing drugs out of Global TransPark and Smithfield airports, we'd be on them in a minute. Torture taxis are against the law, too. Let's stop this mess."

Sep. 20, 2006 - Huff-Po Covers Kinston & Smithfield NC Torture Connection

Tracking the 'Torture Taxi'

 

Roychoudhuri: Where was the most interesting place you traveled?

 

Thompson: We went to Nevada, Massachusetts and New York to track down the front companies. We went to Beale Air force base in Northern California to track U2 spy planes. We went to Smithfield, N.C, which is home to the airfields that many of these airplanes fly out of. Then we went to Kabul and Gardez, Afghanistan.

 

But the two most interesting places were the rural town of Smithfield and Kinston down the road, where there's another airstrip that a company called Aero Contractors uses. Aero is the company that flies many of these missions for the CIA. We went there and talked to a pilot who had worked for Aero about exactly what they did and how the program worked. There's nothing random about the CIA using this rural area in North Carolina. If you wanted to shut up a secret operation, this is where you would do it. It's a god, guns, and guts area.

Roychoudhuri: When you asked questions, what kind of answers did you get?

Thompson: What you start to figure out by spending time in Smithfield is that a lot of people know about the company and have at least an inkling of what goes on at the airport. Most don't want to talk about it and don't take a critical view of it. Folks we met there framed the debate within this religious discourse. The activists that we talked to were god-fearing devout Christians who felt like this was not what they signed up for as religious people, that it violates the religious tenets they adhere to. Interestingly, folks on the other side of the debate seem to be coming from a similar place, but just coming to a different conclusion. The subject of whether or not torture was permitted by the Bible was discussed in church there - and many congregants believed it was.

 

Paglen: It's this small town with this open secret that nobody wants to talk about. It shows what's going on culturally. When a country starts doing things like torturing and disappearing people, it's not just a policy question, it's also a cultural question....

Jul. 15, 2006 - How North Carolina Assists in Torture - Torture Taxis NC

I am starting this blog as an attempt to get the word out - in the hopes that we can stop our airports from being used to shuttle prisioners to torture and non judicial confinement for the CIA.

Aero Contractors, Ltd, is one of the companies tied to the flights for the CIA.  It doesnt own any planes, but claims to lease planes. Aero Contractors operates out of  the Johnston County Airport in Smithfield, North Carolina.

Planespotter hobbyists are able to determine that these flights have been to Prague, which contradicts the claims that the CIA does not have prison flights to Eastern Europe.

Another airport that is used for the rendition flights is the Kinston Regional Jetport, near Kinston, NC in Lenoir County.  This is for the use of their CIA 737, which is too large for the Johnston County airport.

A thorough introductory background on North Carolina's Torture Taxis is available at the Saint Louis Indy Media Ctr, and there is more to come.