Human rights group details new claims on CIA 'torture flights'

FRESH evidence has emerged of the brutality involved in the CIA's programme of extraordinary rendition and its use of Scottish airports as stopping-off points for aircraft involved in the controversial programme.

A report from Amnesty International alleges that detainees were abducted or handed to the CIA by friendly agencies in other countries before being "disappeared".

The report gives accounts of how prisoners were stripped, blindfolded and shackled before being bundled on to rendition flights, and of the existence of a secret eastern European or central Asian prison.

It traces the movements of four planes from the CIA fleet that had landed and taken off at airports, including Glasgow International, Glasgow Prestwick, Edinburgh and Leuchars.

Amnesty is demanding a full independent public inquiry into all aspects of the UK's involvement in rendition flights. The United States has resisted calls for an end to the practice and the UK government has declined to intervene.

Rosemary Burnett, Amnesty's programme director in Scotland, said: "With mounting evidence of illegal CIA rendition flights through European airspace - and multiple landings and take-offs of CIA planes at Scottish airports - there must be an independent inquiry into all aspects of UK involvement in these sinister practices.

"The Scottish public requires reassurance that airports like Prestwick, Glasgow and Edinburgh are not hosting planes used to transport prisoners for secret detention and torture. It is within the power of the Scottish Executive to seek that reassurance and call an inquiry.

"We are insisting that ... American aviation companies stop turning a blind eye to what the CIA does with their planes."

The Amnesty report claims that some rendered prisoners were prepared for their flights by being stripped naked and made to wear absorbent plastic underpants and blue overalls.

The report says that they were handcuffed, blindfolded, shackled; had their hands strapped to waist belts, their ears plugged with foam and their mouths covered with surgical face masks; were hooded and had heavy sound-deadening headphones placed over their ears.

Amnesty claims that the measures were taken to prevent prisoners learning the location of the secret prison sites to which they were taken.

However, the organisation says that former detainees who described a "hi-tech underground prison with American guards and elaborate measures to preserve secrecy and thwart respect for human rights" were able to provide enough information to suggest that the prison was located in Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Macedonia, Albania, Georgia or Azerbaijan.

The report contains details of about 1,000 flights which it says were operated by the CIA through front companies and another 600 flights involving aircraft allegedly hired by the agency.

It alleges that the CIA "exploited aviation practices that would otherwise require their flights to be declared to aviation authorities".

Amnesty said the report "exposes a covert operation whereby people have been arrested or abducted, transferred and held in secret or handed over to countries where they have faced torture and other ill-treatment".

Many of the flights logged passed through European airspace. Yesterday the Scottish Green Party called for the Scottish Executive to investigate.

Patrick Harvie MSP, the party's justice spokesman, said: "It does this country no good to be even remotely associated with the US's ongoing flouting of international law, never mind be the hub for numerous flights carrying suspects to torture centres."