Torture Express. Newsweek has got the flight logs of a CIA-run Boeing 737 airplane used repeatedly to snatch suspects and transfer them to countries where they are interrogated, abused and tortured:

NEWSWEEK has obtained previously unpublished flight plans indicating the agency has been operating a Boeing 737 as part of a top-secret global charter servicing clandestine interrogation facilities used in the war on terror...The Boeing flights are part of a detailed two-year itinerary for the 737 obtained by NEWSWEEK. The jet's record dates to December 2002 and shows flights up until Feb. 7 of this year. The Boeing 737 may have served as a general CIA transport plane for equipment and supplies as well. Among the stops recorded are Libya, where the U.S. government has been dismantling Muammar Kaddafi's clandestine nuclear program, and Jordan, where the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that high-level Qaeda detainees, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were being held. (A Jordanian spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.) The Boeing also landed at Guantanamo.

Ironically, many U.S. officials say, the CIA secret facilities have proven very effective for quietly interrogating a handful of known Qaeda suspects. But when such rough practices "migrated" to Iraqi war detainees and bigger facilities like Abu Ghraib prison—under the direction of the Defense Department—the public backlash compromised the CIA's intel-gathering efforts. Today the agency's cover has been blown and critics are questioning why no full-time CIA employees have been prosecuted despite several cases of serious abuse linked to the agency.

On the eve of Bush's arrival in Germany, Newsweek further reports, German media plan to air a news report about the CIA's recent illegal snatching of a German citizen in Macedonia who was flown aboard the CIA 737 to Afghanistan where he was beaten while interrogated by the CIA. Then they must have found out he was innocent after all, so they dropped him back in Macedonia. I'm sure it's a story that will go a long way to endearing Bush to the public and authorities in Germany, where a Munich prosecutor is investigating the case as a kidnapping.

Posted by Laura at February 20, 2005 12:30 PM