Italy/Morocco - Spain/USA: Rendition updates
01 January 2008
Abou Elkassim Britel was on hunger strike for 53 days, and documents have now surfaced concerning flights that used US airbases in Spain, and flew in the airspace of several European countries
en route to Guantánamo Bay.
Britel called off his hunger strike on 7 January 2008, after a request from Italian consul Stefano Pisotti, three days before he was visited in Oukasha prison in Casablanca by MPs Ezio Locatelli (
Rifondazione Comunista) and Tana de Zulueta (
Verdi). They described his conditions as "serious" and called for an improvement in his detention conditions and for the Italian government to intervene, putting the case for freeing him to Moroccan authorities. Italy's foreign affairs minister, Massimo D'Alema, visited Morocco on 21 January, and Britel's wife suggests that he may have handed a letter in support of Britel to his Moroccan counterpart, although she notes that "I have not received any official communication on the matter".
Evidence has surfaced following enquiries by Portuguese MEP Ana Gomes of the use of US airbases in Spain to transfer prisoners from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, including the first such flight, a C-17 carrying 23 named prisoners. According to Portuguese air traffic records and US military flight plans, it stopped in Morón de la Frontera, in the province of Seville, on 11 January 2002, where the detainees were transferred onto a C-141, flight RCH 7502, that set off for Guantánamo and crossed Portuguese airspace off the Azores archipelago. At least another flight transferred prisoners to Guantánamo after stopping at a US airbase in Spain, this time in Rota (Cádiz) on 28 October 2002 (a C-17, flight RCH 319Y), and another crossed Spanish airspace from Turkey, heading towards the Guantánamo prison-camp on the same day, as several others carrying over 100 prisoners are alleged to have done.
Controls on flights run by or for the US armed forces were made less stringent in the renewal of the convention by which US airbases operate in Spain in 2002, where conditions in the 1989 convention on aircraft "flying over, entering or leaving" Spanish airspace entailed "the previous notification to the Permanent Committee at least seven working days prior to the start of the programme". Article 25.2 was changed, making such flights subject to "a general quarterly authorisation", provided that "they do not carry dangerous personalities or merchandise, nor passengers or a load that may be controversial for Spain".
Audiencia Nacional judge Ismael Moreno is conducting inquiries into the alleged flights and is set to question officials from three airbases (Morón, Rota and Torrejón de Ardoz, a Spanish military airbase near Madrid), following a lawsuit filed by
Izquierda Unida (the United Left party) and the
Asociación Libre de Abogados (ALA, Free Lawyers' Association).
El País reports that the suit calls for the release of information including: the identity of the representatives of the defence and foreign affairs ministries in the Permanent Hispano-North American Committee; documents concerning the suspicious stop-overs; exhaustive information concerning the regulations of the internal regime in bases' airports; US requests and authorisations or refusals concerning "people [who are] not US officials, detained or made prisoners by these country's [armed] forces"; the flight plans of 12 flights arriving from or travelling to Guantánamo; and any authorisation for civilian or military flights run under the US administration's responsibility, "pointing out whether the aircraft missions' purposes detailed the transfer of prisoners".
Stephen Grey, author of the book
Ghost Plane, that reconstructs the network of rendition flights carrying the victims of this unlawful practice, has estimated that at least 170 other prisoners were flown over Spanish territory; more than 700 crossed Portuguese airspace and that many flights also crossed Greek and<