MB Civic

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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/19/1347246

Stephen Grey has followed the trail of private jets who are “rendering” terrorist suspects to other countries to be tortured. This is an eye opening interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now about his book “Ghost Plane”. Here’s a sampling:

STEPHEN GREY: …When Maher Arar was first released, he was one of the first victims of the rendition program to come out. And he described so compellingly what happened to him and how he was taken in this Gulfstream jet, this executive jet, which seemed bizarre, flown across the Atlantic from America to Syria, and described the terrible torture that he faced… I was able to find that actually the movements of these private jets, probably through some errors by the agency and others involved, were quite easy to track around the world. So I found out not only his plane, but a total of about 20 different planes used by the CIA and allied agencies to move people around the world… one of the main companies that is being used for these renditions is called Aero Contractors. It’s a company based in North Carolina… I was initially wondering whether it was just a normal private company that perhaps had a contract with the CIA. As we dug into it more deeply, we discovered it actually was the CIA…

…You have to go back to what would people like Osama bin Laden like us to do. What do they want us to do? They want us to torture. They want us to take oppressive acts, because that wins recruits to their causes. It’s an old lesson of — an old method of terrorists. Take a small minority extremist group, how do they win support? How do they turn themselves into a mass movement? The answer is, cause a terrorist action, kill an innocent people, provoke an enormous reaction which rounds up people who are innocent, causes people to want to take revenge for what’s happened to their families. And this is what’s happened. There’s been a massive reaction. There are people who have been turned into terrorists, as a result of some of the repressive actions that have taken place. And rendition is one of those repressive actions.

And then the trail of CIA private jet flights led him to – surprise surprise – Venezuela during the 2002 coup attempt..

STEPHEN GREY: …In fact, you know, the same plane that took Maher Arar from John F. Kennedy to Syria, the man we’ve discussed who was tortured in Syria, that plane also turned up in Venezuela. And it’s just interesting to see the dates of when these planes go to Venezuela at some pretty crucial moments.

AMY GOODMAN: In the footnotes of your book, you say the first appearance of a possible CIA plane in Venezuela was March 4th, 2002, one day before the coup that temporarily ousted President Hugo Chavez. The possible CIA planes also returned to Venezuela on November 19, 2002; December 6, 2003; January 3, 2004; September 3, 2003; September 4, 2003; November 9, 2004. Now, doesn’t Chavez know these planes are flying in?

STEPHEN GREY: I don’t know. They don’t come saying CIA on them. They come as private business jets that are coming into Venezuela, so I’m not sure he would know who was on board. It wasn’t the actual day before the coup. It was the day before there was a plan signed to remove Chavez.

AMY GOODMAN: Right. The coup was in April.

Feeling patriotic?
-MAB

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