Reykjavik Transit

On June 1, a detainee will stand with a lawyer and plead his case in front of an Afghan judge, said Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the deputy commander for detention operations.in official detention facility in Parwan, a new prison recently opened at the edge of Bagram Air Base. A January 2011 deadline to hand over the facility has been pushed back, Martins said. The hope now is to transfer some of the holding cells to Afghan control by the end of the year and complete the rest by early 2012.

Fadi al-Maqalah, detainee, et al. v Gates USAppDC 09-5265:

The appellate court ruled that there was no right to federal court review for the detainees, who say they were captured outside of Afghanistan, far from any battlefield, and then shipped to Bagram to be held indefinitely in harsh conditions.

Labels: Afghanistan, Bagram, detainee, Fadi al-Maqalah, Parwan, USAppDC

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rules the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts does not extend to foreigners held at Bagram Air Force Base in the Afghan theater of war, and reverses a U.S. district judge who allowed the detainees' petitions.
David Sentelle, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is an appointee of President Ronald Reagan. Harry Edwards was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, and David Tatel by President Bill Clinton. David Sentelle is the only member who remains from the panel that appointed Kenneth Starr as an independent counsel, who, at the time, was considered to be a partisan choice.

Labels: Afghanistan, Bagram, David Sentelle, David Tatel, detainees, Harry Edwards, prison

The US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan contains a facility for detainees that is distinct from its main prison,While Mr. Obama signed an order to eliminate so-called black sites run by the Central Intelligence Agency in January, it did not also close this jail, which is run by military Special Operations forces.

Nine former prisoners have told the BBC that they were held in a separate building, and subjected to abuse. The facility is referred to by many former prisoners as the Tor Jail, which translates as "black jail".

The US military says the main prison, now called the Detention Facility in Parwan, is the only detention facility on the base. Manfred Nowak, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture, said that the site fell into something of a legal limbo.

Labels: Admiral Olsen, Afghanistan, Bagram, black jail, black site, Parwan, Special Operations forces

The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but will monitor their treatment to ensure they are not tortured, administration officials said on 24 August.
Contractor Raymond Azar was arrested in Afghanistan, hooded, stripped and flown to the U.S. on a Gulfstream V jet that flew him from Bagram air base, outside Kabul, to Virginia.
Azar was "treated professionally," kept in a heated room, offered food and water repeatedly and "provided with comfortable chairs to sit in."

They said he was photographed naked and subjected to a cavity search to ensure that he did not carry hidden weapons and was fit for travel. Court records confirmed that Azar was shackled at the ankles, waist and wrists and made to wear a blindfold, hood and earphones aboard the plane.

Prosecutors also said that FBI agents read Azar his rights against self-incrimination on three occasions, and that he "voluntarily" waived them. Azar, 45, pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy to commit bribery, the only charge against him

Labels: Afghanistan, cia flights, extraordinary rendition, Obama Administration, rendition detention detainee flight CIA

Two members of the banned group Lashkar e Tayyiba, which has links to al-Qaeda, understood to be Pakistani nationals, apprehended by UK forces in Iraq had been transferred to US custody in 2004 then transported to Afghanistan. They are still being held in Afghanistan, where they are classified as "unlawful enemy combatants". Defence secretary John Hutton said there was no "substantiated evidence" that they had been mistreated or subjected to abuse there. "There is a underlying charge of complicity with serious abuse of people detained by British forces on operations overseas."

Labels: Afghanistan, flight, Iraq, John le Carré, Lashkar e Tayyiba, rendition

Muhammad Rahim, an Afghan national, was detained in the summer of 2007, according to a statement CIA Director Michael Hayden gave to CIA employees. The CIA transferred him into Defense Department custody earlier this week, according to Whitman. here
Muhammad Rahim was arrested from Lahore, Pakistan. The Nation

Labels: 2007 detainee, Afghanistan, black site, Lahore, rendition

The Chicago Tribune has an inquiry into Mazury-Szczytno International Airport, a former military facility that happens to be near a Polish intelligence training complex where European investigators suspect the CIA maintained a secret interrogation and detention facility.
A Gulfstream V with tail number N379P, took off from Washington's Dulles International Airport on July 27, 2003, and flew to Frankfurt, Germany. FAA records next show the plane taking off from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on July 31, bound for Glasgow, Scotland, and then back to Dulles.

How did the Gulfstream get from Frankfurt to Tashkent, and where did it stop during the four days in between?

The partial answer is Szymany, where Polish aviation records indicate it landed at 2:58 a.m. on July 30 after a flight from Afghanistan.

A more complete flight record is available for a Boeing 737 with tail number N313P. It flew from Tashkent to Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept. 21, 2003, and then to Szymany on Sept. 22, landing at 9 p.m. It stayed on the ground for 57 minutes before taking off for Baneasa Airport in Bucharest, Romania, an airport that, according to the Marty report, "bears all the characteristics of a detainee transfer or drop-off point."

It then continued on to Rabat, Morocco, and Guantanamo Bay, the report said.

The registered owners of both planes appear to be CIA front companies. Previous attempts by the Tribune to contact the owners produced a trail of non-existent people at unlikely addresses, or law firms that did not want to discuss the nature of their interest in aviation. Both planes have been involved in rendition cases documented by the Tribune, other media and EU investigators.

Another Gulfstream, this one registered to an upstate New York charter company called International Group LLC, flew on Dec. 3, 2002, from Dulles to Anchorage; the next day it flew from Anchorage to Kansai, Japan, according to FAA logs. The log for the following day, Dec. 5, is blank. But on Dec. 6, the plane flew from London's Luton Airport back to Dulles.

Records provided by Jurczenko indicate that the Gulfstream was in Szymany on Dec. 5.

International Group LLC is an established charter company, charging customers $5,600 an hour to fly them to such places as Las Vegas, Hawaii and Bora-Bora in the South Pacific.

"We've moved some pretty high-profile people, including some former U.S. presidents," said Steve Marchionda, International Group's owner.

Marchionda acknowledged that his company's plane landed at Szymany but said the probable reason was to take on fuel. He said the plane had no passengers on board when it arrived at Szymany or when it left.

He also said the plane was never in Afghanistan but rather somewhere "well south of there." He said the company's privacy policy prevented him from saying who had chartered the plane during that time but insisted it wasn't the CIA.

The CIA sometimes uses front companies to charter aircraft from commercial or private owners. A Gulfstream registered to Phillip Morse, a partner in the Boston Red Sox, was used in one rendition that has resulted in the indictment of 25 current and former CIA operatives by an Italian prosecutor.

Przewlocka, the former airport manager, said that when the mystery planes would land at Szymany, they usually were greeted by two military vans with shaded windows. She said the vehicles had government license plates that local people associated with the intelligence base at Stare Kiejkuty.

She recalled that on one occasion, an ambulance came with the vans. On another occasion, a landing was attended by "a lady who said she represented the American Embassy," Przewlocka said.

"She stood in front of the building and stared at the aircraft. When the two vans went past her on the way out, she turned aside. It was like she didn't want to see them," she said.
here

Labels: Afghanistan, CIA, detainee, detention, flight, Mazury-Szczytno, Szymany