CIA torturers passed through Scotland on rendition flights, says rights group

Published on Thursday 23 August 2007 01:14

CIA "torturers" have been flown to the Middle East through Scotland as part of the United States' controversial rendition flights programme, ministers will be told today.

The new allegations will be made by human rights campaigners, who will urge the SNP-led Scottish Executive to take powers from London to allow it to stop Scotland being used for these flights in future.

Kenny MacAskill, the justice secretary, will also be told Scottish airports were heavily involved in the process of shipping prisoners from eastern Europe to Guantanamo Bay, the United States' base in Cuba.

Reprieve, a group that fights for prisoners denied justice in the name of the "war on terror", will tell Mr MacAskill

that 24 CIA jets stopped to refuel on Scottish soil at least 107 times between 2001 and 2005.

It will also claim six named individuals have been "victims" of Scottish refuelling flights, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected al-Qaeda mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks in New York.

Clive Stafford Smith, the legal director of Reprieve, told The Scotsman there was no evidence Sheikh Mohammed had been flown through Scotland. But he said his group could prove planes involved in transporting Sheikh Mohammed from Europe to Guantanamo Bay had passed through Scotland.

Mr Stafford Smith said: "There is no evidence that prisoners were on the planes, but there were torturers on the planes which went to places in the Middle East. Scotland is complicit in these actions and I do not think they want to be complicit. The SNP should look at having powers in foreign policy and over aviation policy."

The Executive said it had made "clear its opposition to rendition flights". It said Reprieve and other groups had been invited to produce any evidence they had about airports in Scotland being used for such purposes.