Is North Carolina Running a Torture Taxi Service?

On December 31, 2003, officials forcefully removed Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen, from a bus at the Macedonian border, while he was traveling on a holiday. Officials confiscated his passport and transported him to a hotel room in Skopje, denying him contact with anyone outside the room. After a month of interrogations, a Boeing 737 took off from a runway at the Global TransPark in Kinston, N.C., and arrived in Macedonia to render a beaten and sedated el-Masri to a prison in Afghanistan. For the next four months, he was aggressively interrogated about his personal contacts, his place of worship, and whether he was a member of al-Qaeda. On May 28, 2004, el-Masri’s captors released him on a deserted road in Albania. Albanian officials helped him board a flight back to Germany. Khaled el-Masri was never charged with any crime nor given any explanation for his five-month detention.

In the months that followed his ordeal, Khaled el-Masri claimed that he had been a victim of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. Through extraordinary rendition, the CIA picks up terrorist suspects and transports them to prisons in other countries where they are interrogated and links to terrorism can be established. Khaled el-Masri was neither the first nor the last in a long line of suspects the CIA has abducted. El-Masri was rendered because his name was similar to an actual suspect. He was believed to be innocent after the first round of interrogations by American CIA operatives.¹ Without Washington’s release authorization, however, his detention went on for months, despite the fact that CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice received at least two reports regarding strong suspicion of el-Masri’s innocence.¹

The CIA’s program of abducting terrorist suspects from foreign countries began in the mid-1990s during the Clinton administration. At that time, evidence was collected against a suspect before the rendition. Suspects were generally those against whom there were outstanding foreign arrest warrants, and the countries to which they were delivered had some prior claim on them.² Prior to 9/11, the United States abducted an estimated 70 people through the rendition program. Since 9/11, the program has expanded significantly. Suspects are often abducted in the absence of evidence of criminal activities. The countries to which they are taken have usually been cited for human rights abuses, and often no charges are brought against them to justify the detention.³

The declaration of the “Global War on Terror” and the advent of the term “enemy combatant” helped the Bush administration widen the pool of potential extraordinary rendition victims and claim that these are unique cases to which the normal rules of war and human rights do not apply.⁴ In the past five years, over 150 people have been captured through the extraordinary rendition program, more than twice than in the previous decade.³ A recent report released by the European Parliament estimates that “at least 1,245 undeclared flights operated by the CIA flew into European airspace or stopped over at European airfields after September 11, 2001.”⁵

According to FAA records collected by European and American prosecutors, the planes used in extraordinary renditions are Boeing 737s and Gulfstream Vs. The CIA has created shell companies to serve as the owners of its approximately 26 planes. The agency commissions real U.S. companies to operate these jets, providing them with flight orders and rendition crews. On a typical flight, a plane departs from its airstrip and lands in Virginia to pick up a CIA team. It then flies to an overseas base such as the one in Majorca, Spain, so the crew can rest and the plane can refuel. The next step is to render a suspected terrorist from his current location and fly him to one of a number of secret CIA-operated prisons. FAA flight records show that many of these planes visit several subsequent locations, possibly transporting more suspects to other secret prisons, before returning home to the United States.¹

In September 2006, President Bush acknowledged that the CIA does operate prisons at secret sites in Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. While the Bush administration still claims that torture is not part of the mysterious interrogation repertoire used in these prisons, testimony from former detainees like Khaled el-Masri suggests otherwise.

A North Carolina aviation company called Aero Contractors, Ltd, founded in 1979 by a former CIA Air America pilot, leases space in Kinston at the Global TransPark and Smithfield at the Johnston County Airport. FAA records show that the company does not actually own any planes but offers clients aircraft charters with a pilot. The investigation of el-Masri’s case led lawyers to a plane flown by Aero Contractors that Global TransFkrk matched precisely the flight plan their client described.

At the time of el-Masri’s rendition, this plane was owned by Massachusetts-based Premier Executive Transport Services and operated by Aero Contractors. Its tail number was N313P. Shortly thereafter, the plane changed ownership to Keeler & Tate Management, widely believed to be an alternate CIA shell company to replace the now-defunct Premier, and also changed its tail number to N4476S. The plane now looks to have changed hands again amid recent media attention to el-Masri’s case. The tail number N4476S is deregistered according to the FAA, but a search for the plane’s serial number, 33010, shows that the Boeing 737 was registered in August 2006 to MGM Mirage Aircraft Holdings, LLC in Las Vegas.⁶

Back in Germany, after his extraordinary rendition experience, Khaled el-Masri contacted his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic. Gnjidic wrote letters to the German chancellor and the minister of foreign affairs, both of whom opened investigations.

On December 6, 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of Khaled el-Masri, naming former CIA Director George Tenet, Premier Executive Transport Services, Aero Contractors, 10 unnamed CIA operatives, and 10 unnamed employees of Aero Contractors as defendants. The case was dismissed in May 2006 on the grounds that it would reveal state secrets. The United States government argued, as it does when detainees at Guantanamo Bay have tried to bring their cases to trial, that court proceedings would force them to publicize evidence that might aid America’s enemies and compromise the fight against terrorism.⁷ The ACLU filed an appeal in July 2006 and, in March 2007, the court rejected that appeal, upholding the dismissal based on the state secrets privilege.

In North Carolina, activists and elected state representatives have begun to question the legality and morality of Aero Contractors’ presence in the state. The space that Aero Contractors leases in Kinston and Smithfield, North Carolina, is publicly owned, with tax dollars paying for the airstrips. Furthermore, there are several state officials on the board of directors of the Global TransPark—most notably, Governor Mike Easley is the board’s chair.

On January 18, 2007, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper received a letter signed by 22 state legislators urging him to instruct the State Bureau of Investigation to undertake an investigation of Aero Contractors. The legislators wrote specifically that the SBI should “investigate credible allegations that Aero Contractors conspired to commit federal crimes and then provided material support to the commission of those crimes on property owned by the State of North Carolina.” The letter to Cooper was a second attempt by state legislators to act on media and public outcry about Aero’s connection to illegal activities. In October 2006, 12 of the 22 legislators who signed the current letter signed onto a similar letter addressed to SBI Director Robin Pendergraft. Pendergraft responded that the SBI had no jurisdiction over the matter and therefore refused to open an investigation of Aero Contractors. In the current letter, legislators cite a North Carolina Supreme Court decision that contradicts Pendergraft’s opinion, ruling that it is the conspiracy agreement itself and not the overt acts that must be carried out in North Carolina for the state to have proper jurisdiction. As of February 2007, Attorney General Cooper has not responded to the letter.

Groups seeking to bring attention to the issue, most notably Stop Torture Now, have also taken their requests to the federal level. Stop Torture Now is currently urging Congressional representatives to sponsor legislation to ensure that the United States keeps its commitments under federal and international laws and treaties, halting the extraordinary rendition program.

Internationally, a great deal more action is taking place to investigate and react to the CIA’s program. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has issued a formal apology to extraordinary rendition victim Maher Arar, who was picked up in New York City’s JFK airport and transported to Syria, where he was detained and tortured for almost a year. Arar will receive $12.5 million in compensation from the Canadian government for their role in aiding the CIA in his rendition.⁸ According to the Syrian ambassador in Washington, Syria found Arar to have no ties to terrorism, but the United States refuses to take him off the terrorist watch list.

In Europe, major action is now being taken against CIA operatives who kidnapped European citizens in extraordinary renditions. In 2007, Germany issued arrest warrants for thirteen of Khaled el-Masri’s captors, and a number of their real names have been discovered. At least three operatives named in the German case live within 30 miles of Aero Contractors’ base in Smithfield, North Carolina.⁹ Italy issued similar arrest warrants for operatives who kidnapped an Italian citizen and flew him to detention in Egypt.¹⁰

The European Parliament recently issued a report condemning the CIA program of extraordinary rendition and found 14 European member states guilty of complicity. The report establishes the stance that extraordinary rendition is “an illegal instrument used by the United States in the fight against terrorism.” It warns member states not to allow CIA over flights or stops in European airspace.

Citations:

1. “El-Masri Complaint,” American Civil Liberties Union to District Court, Dec. 6, 2005.

“Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake,” Washington Post, Dec. 4, 2005.

“Wronged Man,” Washington Post, Nov. 29, 2006.

2. “Outsourcing Torture,” The New Yorker, Feb. 14, 2005.

3.“Briefing: Torture by Proxy: International Law Applicable to ‘Extraordinary Renditions,” A 1 1 Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition: New York University School of Law, Dec. 2005.

4.“Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President Re: Standards of Conduct for Interrogation 18 U.S.C. 2340-2340A,” US Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, Aug. 1, 2002.

5.“AlegedUse of European Countries by the CIA for the Transportation and Illegal Detention of Prisoners,” European Parliament, Feb. 14, 2007.

6. Federal Aviation Administration website, www.faa.gov.

7.“E1-Masriv. Tenet: Background on the State Secrets Privilege,” American Civil Liberties Union.

“El-Masri v. Tenet: Reply Brief for Plaintiff-Appellant,” American Civil Liberties Union to court of Appeals, Sept. 25, 2006.

8.“Maher Arar: Timeline,” Canadian Broadcasting Company In Depth, Jan. 26, 2007.

9. “Pilots Traced to CIA Renditions,” LA Times, Feb. 18, 2007.

10.“Italy Indicts CIA Agents in Abduction of Terror Suspects,” International Herald Tribune, Feb. 16, 2007.