CIA torture flights used Scots airports
They landed here dozens of times, report claims
TWO Scottish airports were regular transit points for secret CIA “torture” flights, according to a study of the agency’s rendition programme during the so-called war on terror.
Glasgow and Prestwick airports were used to refuel and resupply US flights taking suspects to and from foreign interrogation sites, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Their 400-page report, CIA Torture Unredacted, is the first time that all the flights in the US intelligence agency’s detention programme has been systematically revealed.
Glasgow Airport was used 12 times and Prestwick Airport, then privately run, 18 times between 2001 and 2004, according to the report, although it cannot be proved that detainees were on board when the flights landed,
Inverness and Wick airports, which were also said to have been used, were not mentioned.
CIA Torture Unredacted
claims to be the most comprehensive account of what happened during the the “war on terror”, the military campaign launched by the US after the 911 terror attacks in 2001 which took in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
During that time, terror suspects were taken to the feared Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba or to so-called CIA “black sites” in Europe, where it is claimed torture took place.
The report backs up another issued by Parliament’s intelligence and security committee last year which raised concerns about Scottish airports being used for the flights.
Clive Stafford Smith, the founder of Reprieve, which campaigns for detainees, said: “With a pioneering combination of sophisticated analysis techniques and detailed open-source research, it unveils crucial data which the CIA tried to hide in its censorship of the torture report.”