390 CIA Torture Flights In Germany Alone

When air traffic controllers hear the code words “ATFM exempt,” they know to expect something drastic. Airlines use the code to report a flight when it has sick or severely injured passengers — or heads of state — on board. The code is the air-traffic equivalent of flashing blue lights on a city street.

On July 19, 2002, a Gulfstream business jet took off from Frankfurt am Main bound for Amman, Jordan. The flight received an ATFM exempt, although it carried neither patients nor politicians. Instead, the jet was carrying a CIA team that took a Mauritanian terrorism suspect into custody a short time later and eventually flew him to Guántánamo.

This camouflaging of an illegal kidnapping as a rescue flight was no isolated incident. SPIEGEL has obtained complete lists of the flight plans of secret CIA flights in German airspace, which reveal 390 takeoffs and landings of CIA aircraft at airports in Germany between 2002 and 2006. The documents also show that mis-identifying the flights was part of a system designed to dodge compliance with complicated approval regulations.

These deceptive maneuvers by the CIA have become the subject of intense scrutiny and debate within German political circles — from the Ministry of Transportation and the LBA to the Chancellery. Soon a parliamentary committee set up to investigate the German foreign intelligence agency (or BND) will also take up the matter. On Thursday the committee appointed Joachim Jacob, a former federal data protection commissioner, as special investigator on the issue of secret CIA flights. Jacob’s job is to determine how much the German government knew about the flights, which European Council investigator Dick Marty has called a “series of illegal acts” by the CIA.

Jacob will also investigate why the German government has been so tight-lipped on the flights.  According to internal documents, former Interior Minister Otto Schily was “directly presented” in February 2005 with various press reports about US intelligence agents. At the time Bernhard Falk, the deputy head of Germany’s Federal Office of Criminal Investigation, was apparently so concerned about the questionable flights that he wrote to the interior ministry: “I recommend … that you inform your senior officials.” Falk also suggested that the reports be “made available to other departments that could be involved with such procedures or accusations.”

 Under German aviation law, the false declaration of flights is an infringement subject to fines ranging from €10,000 to €25,000. All told, the 390 CIA flights would have incurred fines of between four and 10 million euros.

So very correct of them, to add up the fines that should be imposed! It is remarkable the Germans have this level of information when here we are still far from any govt. accountability or investigation. How about all the attention given to a liar’s shitty book could be better spent finding out about Blair’s complicity. Seems our airspace is owned by the US.