• Home /
• News /
• 2009 /
• August /
• Portugal/CIA flights: Investigation "buries" Portuguese role in Guantanamo flights

Portugal/CIA flights: Investigation "buries" Portuguese role in Guantanamo flights

28 March 2012

On 6 July 2009, Socialist party MEP Ana Gomes criticised the investigation into flights to Guantánamo and rendition flights that passed through Portugal, in response to the case being shelved on 29 May 2009 because "no unlawful practices of a criminal nature" were carried out in the "national territory". Gomes claimed that the investigation appeared to have the "political objective of burying the issue of Portugal's role in the CIA flights" and filed a complaint requesting that judicial investigations continue and new verifications which had "inexplicably" not yet taken place be conducted into the CIA flights to Guantánamo.

She highlighted unsatisfactory elements in the inquiries by the general prosecutors' office, particularly the failure to seek to ascertain political responsibilities for the authorisation of a number of suspect flights. Gomes nonetheless refers to the investigation by the Procuradoria-Geral da República (PGR, the Portuguese general prosecutors' office) that began in February 2006 as "important" in confirming the suspicion of involvement in renditions and journeys to Guantánamo of the list of 94 flights that she submitted in November 2005, resulting in the start of the investigation, and in clarifying a number of "facts". These include the admission by the Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros (foreign affairs ministry, MNE) that it had granted permission "of an absolutely exceptional nature" for USA flights to pass through Portuguese airspace and use Lajes airbase (jointly run by the Portuguese and US armed forces) in the Azores for stop-overs to "transport contentious material and people". Other circumstances support the view that Portuguese territory was used for unlawful practices, including:

- the identification of eight names that coincide with those of people believed to be CIA agents for whom Italian and German judicial authorities have issued arrest warrants for involvement in extraordinary renditions;

- nine of the flight service providers identified as having acted in Portuguese territory were implicated in the rendition programme by Italian, German and Spanish investigations;

- flight N379P (aka "Guantánamo Express") operated by CIA ghost company Stevens Express landed twice in Lisbon airport and was designated as a "State flight", meaning it must have either obtained Portuguese diplomatic permission or breached regulations;

- the existence of at least two "ghost flights" about which no records exist, one of them passing through Lajes en route to Guantánamo, and the other referred to as a "hospital flight", also in Lajes, where a passenger described as "highly dangerous" and dressed in "orange overalls" with his hands and feet handcuffed was allegedly seen;

- several flights about which Portuguese authorities are unable to establish how many passengers they carried, who they were, or even who disembarked and stayed in Portugal for some days;

- provision of large quantities of ice were requested by several of the suspect flights for purposes that have not been understood, far above the levels that would have been reasonable for ordinary catering purposes by the number of passengers on board (12 kg for five people, or 90kg for six passengers over three days…).

Nonetheless, Gomes criticised the failure by the PGR to delve into the implications of these findings or to ask foreign affairs and defence ministry officials what the expression "contentious materials" meant, or the reasons for the concession of an "absolutely exceptional" authorisation to carry "people". These shortcomings resulted in observations by the investigating magistrates that while "it cannot be excluded" that people or flights were linked to the CIA or US authorities, this cannot be "established" or "demonstrated". Moreover, "State flights" were designated as such in records without any diplomatic permission being issued, a malpractice with serious implications for national security and for that of fellow Schengen states that was not investigated further, the existence of "ghost flights" was not thoroughly investigated, and nor was the purpose for which copious amounts of ice were supplied. The order to close investigations also included an appreciation that existing regulations were complied with by bodies responsible for managing civil aviation in spite of the unavailability of records and a number of details concerning certain flights. Gomes stressed that the "limited scope" of investigations by the Procuradoria-Geral da República (PGR) was "inadequate" for revealing the truth about this matter. She noted that it is surprising that the prime ministers in the 2002-2006 period were not heard, and nor were diplomatic or intelligence service officials, the foreign affairs and defence ministers, US Embassy officials and the directors of the Instituto Nacional de Aviaçao Civil (INAC, national civil aviation institute), Navegaçao Aérea de Portugal (NAV, the Portuguese air traffic authority) and the commanders of Lajes airbase in that time frame. She also argued that it is "difficult to understand" why details from investigations carried out in Italy, Germany and Spain were ignored, as was the fact that Spanish authorities have admitted that US officials requested permission for flights carrying "Taliban" prisoners (see Statewatch news online, November 2008), something that is believed to have also happened in Portugal. Moreover, information submitted by Gomes concerning former prime minister Durão Barroso's request for a legal opinion about the possibility that US navy ships carrying prisoners subjected to interrogation should use Portuguese waters without undergoing customary maritime formalities, receiving an affirmative response from Portuguese navy officials for the concession of such exemptions, did not result in further inquiries.

The investigation by the PGR is deemed to have failed to look into the leads provided that may have produced evidence of illegal detention, torture and degrading treatment that may have occurred on flights that landed in Portuguese airports, such as the large amounts of ice ordered by such flights during stop-overs in Porto airport. Flight authorisation and details on people boarding and disembarking from flights are missing, available data was not crossed with that provided by the NGO Reprieve, whose reports detailed the cases of identified passengers carried in these flights, and may have helped to obtain evidence of illegal detention, torture and degrading treatment. The foreign affairs ministry was not asked whether the exceptional permission granted to "transport contentious material and persons" included the transfer of prisoners to detention facilities that operated outside of the international legal framework, with data about passengers carried through Lajes airbase not even being available to the Portuguese air force. Ana Gomes noted that the PGR's investigation reveals that Portuguese authorities did not take care to ensure that the flights authorised to land in Lajes were not used to treat prisoners in ways that violated Portugal's international commitments in the field of basic human rights, in spite of the existence of a number of inquiries conducted at an international level, including the European Parliament's committee on renditions and on the collusion of European national authorities in this practice.

The first problem highlighted in the appeal, is that the "limited scope of the investigation is totally inadequate to discover the truth". In highlighting the failure by the PGR to interrogate intelligence service officials and politicians with governmental responsiblities, Gomes says that she "does not understand" the reasons for this, in a matter concerning activity by agents of a foreign secret service on national territory, all the more so as they are suspected of involvement in crimes of abduction, kidnapping, torture and other degrading treatments in the framework of the extraordinary rendition programme. It was confirmed that the aircraft mentioned in the report that led to the investigation being opened (identified by the PE's Temporary Committee into renditions as instrumental in the renditions programme) stopped in Portuguese airports, and inquiries have shown that the system for authorising flights and checking who boarded or disembarked from them was structurally weak and marked by resounding gaps, whether or not these were intentional. The failure by the PGR to take the findings, investigations and judicial proceedings that are underway in Italy, Germany and Spain in which agents of national secret services have been charged into account in spite of their potential usefulness in verifying facts pertaining to this issue is a further concern. Gomes also refers to the Legal Opinion produced by the Venice Commission of 17-18 March 2006 concerning the International Legal Obligations of Member States of the Council of Europe concerning Secret Detention Facilities and the Transport of Prisoners between States, noting that it sets out States' "positive duty to investigate substantiated allegations of breaches of fundamental rights by foreign agents" as well as noting that a State's duty to protect people under its jurisdiction "may also be violated through acquiescence or connivance in the conduct of foreign agents". In the Spanish investigation, it emerged that government officials were informed by the political-military attaché of the US embassy on 10 January 2002 that permission would be sought for flights "transporting Taliban prisoners", and that other countries had likewise been notified. Does the failure by the PGR to inquire as to whether this also happened in Portugal, Gomes asks, "mean that the public prosecutor takes it for granted that the American authorities do not have the same consideration for Portugal as for Spain?". Otherwise, high ranking government officials and those from the MNE responsible for relations with the US at the start of the renditions programme should be asked about the authorisation of "State flights" and "military flights", which was not recorded as having been granted using a diplomatic note by the foreign affairs ministry.

Information provided by Ana Gomes herself on 13 July 2007 about Durão Barroso's request concerning the exemption of US navy ships from ordinary maritime procedures was not followed up, and nor was that concerning US navy ships in Portuguese territorial waters in 2003 and 2004, particularly the USS Bataan, photographed in Lisbon harbour in the summer of 2003, in which Australian Guantánamo prisoner David Hicks was transported and interrogated. Gomes complains that she informed the PGR of the people who had provided the information about the legal opinion and ships, but these were not heard. There was no mention of the Binyam Mohammed case in spite of information provided about the Ethiopian's transfers between Moroccan and Afghan prisons in flights during which he was "savagely tortured", and the RCH947 flight that stopped in Lajes airbase en route to Guantánamo on 20 September 2004. Gomes put the PGR in contact with Clive Stafford Smith, the lawyer representing Binyam Mohammed, and material published by Reprieve claims that ten "ghost prisoners" were on board the flight, which was not investigated due to "reasons of trial strategy".

The appeal then challenges the investigation's methodology as being "totally inadequate to discover the truth". There are civilian flights classified as "State flights" for which the MNE assured that it had not issued diplomatic authorisation. The PGR argued that it was a matter of private companies claiming that these were State flights in order to obtain landing slots in Lisbon or Porto airports. The explanation is dismissed by Gomes' appeal, because "No flight -civilian or military- enters Portuguese airspace without an explicit authorisation by the Portuguese state", one of the key provisions in the Chicago Convention on international civil aviation, and the breaching of which would result in interception or even the shooting down of a craft by the Fuerça Aérea Portuguesa (FAP, Portuguese air force). Moreover, flight plans are not approved without a "slot" having been provided, and even if the carrier had misled Lisbon airport authorities to obtain a landing slot, the behaviour would have been strange, considering that authorised flights are never denied a possibility of landing, with or without an arranged landing slot. The PGR's acceptance of this circumstance when it is a breach of the law, considering that states are exclusively responsible for designating flights as State flights, is described as "surprising". Moreover, as a result of the system involving both civilian (INAC) and military (FAP) personnel and including the use of radars in the checking of flight authorisation and the presence of flights in Portuguese airspace -civilian flights request it from INAC and "State" or military flights from the MNE- it is "impossible to pretend to have an authorisation", diplomatic or otherwise. Hence, the flight either received diplomatic authorisation from the MNE, or civilian authorisation from INAC, or it would have been intercepted due to its irregular status, and answers should have been sought from the competent authorities. If none of these scenarios were confirmed, it would be up to the investigation to find out why the FAP had not complied with the "procedures legally established by Portuguese and international law". These inquiries would be particularly relevant as regards aircraft N379P (aka Guantánamo Express), operated by CIA front company Stevens Express (as emerged from EP commission's inquiry on renditions) and its two stop-overs in Lisbon. Confirmation of the authorisation should be easy to obtain either from the MNE or INAC, but the PGR explained away the matter as a "lie by the operator to arrange a slot".

The one example provided by the PGR of such a practice is described as inconsistent, particularly as the false claim in that case was made by a handling agent rather than the aircraft operator, as was mistakenly stated in the order for the investigation to be shelved, Gomes argues. Moreover, doubts persist as to why, if authorisation had not been granted, this was not checked with INAC, as there is no such authorisation on record and the border authorities (SEF, Serviço Estrangeria e Fronteras) do not know the identity of the five people who disembarked in Lisbon or the number of crew members. It concerned a Bedford (US) - Lisbon - Cascais - Lisbon - Bedford flight on 15 and 16 May 2005 carried out using a craft that had previously been used to carry Abdurahman Khadr and a team of CIA agents (using a different identification number) on 7 November 2003, landing in Santa Maria.

Ana Gomes highlights that this matter, and the supposed use of this "expedient" by carriers, would have serious implications for the security and sovereignty of Portugal and fellow EU member states. The PGR also failed to inquire as to the implications of a number of acronyms used in the NAV records for several of the flights in question authorised as civil flights by INAC, namely, whether they guaranteed "special treatment for the aircraft in question" and why, and whether the MNE, national defence ministry or Portuguese information services knew about them. The 2006 Venice Commission Legal Opinion referred to above clearly states that "the inspection of a State flight that presents itself as a civilian flight… must be carried out when there are reasonable grounds for believing that the aeroplane may be used to commit human rights violations".

As for military flights, the foreign ministry (MNE) claims that they largely fell under the general diplomatic authorisation granted in the context of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Gomes stresses the difference between ISAF (a NATO operation to stabilise Afghanistan which involves obligations for Portugal and had a UN Security Council mandate) and OEF (a US-led ad hoc alliance that did not entail any legal obligations or duties to support, co-operate or participate in it for Portugal). Hence, blanket diplomatic authorisations granted in the framework of OEF were not a matter of complying with obligations, but rather, a political choice. Moreover, as neither NATO nor UN missions flew to or from Guantánamo, a base turned into a prison camp where prisoners are kept in violation of international law, and this was confirmed in a letter by the NATO Secretary General, the Venice Commission document is quoted once again to explain that: "Council of Europe member states… do not have the international obligation to allow irregular prisoner transfers or to grant unconditional overflight permissions for the purpose of fighting terrorism. Hence, it is the Commission's opinion that states must interpret and comply with their obligations resulting from international treaties, including those deriving from the NATO treaty and agreements on military bases and SOFAs [Status of Force Agreements concerning military staff deployed overseas and the preservation of primary jurisdiction by the sending state], where applicable, in a way that is compatible with their human rights obligations". Even where agreements are stipulated concerning prisoner transfers, duties resulting from treaties are subject to compliance with peremptory norms (jus cogens) and "the prohibition of torture is a peremptory norm".

Hence, Gomes argues that it is necessary to establish what information and legal or political considerations were behind the granting of diplomatic authorisations to US military flights travelling to or from Guantánamo to land in Portugal. This is particularly the case following the MNE's reply to judicial requests for information which provides details of two kinds of clearance granted to military and state flights: annual Blanket Diplomatic Clearance covering pre-defined missions that are granted to States and "do not allow the transport of contentious material"; and two general authorisations "granted on absolutely exceptional grounds to the US" for US aircraft to fly over Portuguese airspace and use Lajes airbase in the context of the "Enduring Freedom" and "Iraqi Freedom" operations. These authorisations are not granted to any other State and allow "the transport of contentious material and people". This information means that investigating magistrates should have inquired what the "contentious material" referred to may have been, and whether the authorisations implied permission from Portuguese authorities to carry out activities that were incompatible with international law, the Portuguese constitutional order and the Treaty of the European Union (TEU) on its territory. Gomes also refers to a letter received from former JHA commissioner Franco Frattini on 7 December 2005, stating that "Were the allegations concerning secret detention centres to be proven, they could constitute a serious breach of the principles on which the EU is based", including the prohibition of torture. Also, it would be relevant to ascertain whether the "people" that the US were authorised to transport were just military personnel between the Afghan and Iraqi war areas, or whether the permission implicitly or explicitly authorised the transport of prisoners to camps operating beyond the bounds of international law, in which case Portugal would have "actively and knowingly participated" in systematic breaches of international law and of the TEU.

Another aspect that is deemed "decisive for this investigation" in the appeal, beyond a description of procedures, is an analysis of the practices that they entailed. There are no details as to the existence or nature of an authorisation for two flights: Tuzla (Bosnia) - Lajes - Guantánamo on 24.12.2002 and Guantánamo - Lajes - Incirlik (Turkey) on 18.11.2003. The first appears to be a "ghost flight" as there are no details available of its passage through Portugal, whereas data does exist for the second one, with the US request for authorisation for a "mission [that] will move security forces and medical personnel... approx 95 PAX". Gomes argues that this is important as it reveals a practice of information exchange as to the purpose and people on board of flights between US and Portuguese authorities, which is further confirmed by a detailed authorisation request for a C-32B military aircraft to land in Lajes on 31 July 2005, including mention that there would be approximately ten passengers on board, and ten crew members who were all US citizens. Further flights have been identified, including one carrying an Egyptian prisoner who was being extradited from Guantánamo to Cairo on 30 September 2005 - the MNE was informed by the US embassy - in relation to which Gomes argues that it would be necessary to find out what checks the MNE carried out to ensure that he was extradited legally through Portugal without breaching international or Portuguese law, particularly as "Egypt is notoriously a country in which torture occurs". This is the only instance in which the MNE confirmed knowledge of the presence of prisoners on US flights, and it only happened after the information had become public in Spain as a result of judicial inquiries, but it is further confirmation of the existence of communications as to the various aircraft's human cargo. This makes the lack of information from the MNE and defence ministry as to the nature, mission and passengers on the vast majority of the flights to and from Guantánamo all the more surprising, indicating either a selection of information made available to Portuguese authorities by their US counterparts, or a lack of interest by the former to ensure that their territory was not used for unlawful activity.
The gaps in available data on five civilian flights granted authorisation for six stop-overs in Lajes airbase are deemed "particularly significant and suspicious" in that they lack data on crew members and passengers, when controls in a military base operated jointly by the US and Portuguese armed forces could be expected to be more rigorous than in civil airports, particularly as regards private flights. Thus, Portugal did not conduct any checks to ensure that human rights were not violated on its territory, and the Portuguese commander of Lajes airbase since September 2008 confirmed that FAP was not informed of the number and names of military personnel or the cargo carried in flights, as prior notice was only required for dangerous materials.

Gomes stresses the failure of the PGR to delve into the issue of the contents of US flights identified in the EP inquiry as being potentially involved in extraordinary renditions, such as that involving the transport of the six Algerians known as the "Bosnian six" (and others), from Incirlik (Turkey) to Guantánamo in January and February 2002, on dates when stop-overs occurred in Portugal and in aircraft that landed in Lajes, with documentation available as to the conditions in which they were transported (hooded, wounded, handcuffed).

The conclusion in the order for the case to be shelved is turned on its head by Gomes, from:
"the acts do not contain elements of proof that allow it to be concluded that any unlawful act of a criminal nature was enacted in the national territory",
to:

"the acts contain significant evidence that crimes were enacted in the national territory within the framework of extraordinary renditions".

This claim is followed by the explanation that the investigation had structural faults that resulted in it ending up being "incomplete and frustrated". Links with renditions could have easily been established by crossing available data with that from Italian, German and Spanish judicial investigations into renditions, as it identified 148 people, a number of them suspected of being CIA agents, some of whom appeared on Portuguese territory and had arrest warrants issued against them later in Italy and Germany. Likewise, data from both these investigations and the EP inquiry would have thrown up names of a number of companies operating on behalf of the CIA and involved in renditions that operated some of the flights in question. The investigators' acceptance as normal of the lack of information concerning crew members, passengers on flights, people who disembarked and how long they stayed in Portugal (for which hotel records sometimes helped to provide information, "indirect" and "unsatisfactorily") is also criticised, as is the failure to investigate the truthfulness of unconfirmed eyewitness reports that prisoners were seen in Lajes airbase by staff. Gomes also suggests that the unusually large amounts of ice ordered on the flights may have been evidence that some sort of organic matter that required preservation was carried in the flights, but no effort what made to ascertain whether this was the case, one of many key matters that were left unresolved.

Gomes' appeal also dwells on suspicious details concerning a number of flights, far from exhaustive, but sufficient to highlight the inconsistencies in available information, and the possibility that prisoners may have been kept overnight in flights, sedated, wounded or injured, with the food and ice ordered far exceeding that required for the numbers of declared crew members and passengers:

-the "black hole" concerning information on a flight by the aircraft nick-named Guantánamo Express operated by Jeppesen Dataplan between Rabat and Porto on 15 September 2002 before it set off to Afghanistan two days later. The number of passengers and crew members is not known, but the handling procedure is signed by Maria Baetz, a suspected CIA agent against whom an arrest warrant was issued by Italian judges. [Jeppesen Dataplan is one of the companies identified in the investigation that has been notoriously linked to renditions and is facing a federal lawsuit in the USA filed in 2007 by the ACLU on behalf of five rendition victims (including Abou el-Kassim Britel), for "knowingly" participating in this practice "by providing critical flight planning and logistical support services to aircraft and crews used by the CIA to forcibly disappear … five men to detention and interrogation"]

- inconsistencies between records in different stages of the procedure for the same craft are highlighted concerning a Cairo - Porto - Algiers - Porto - Washington flight which stopped in Porto on 19 and 23 May 2003.

- on 13 August 2003, the same craft is recorded as carrying five passengers by air traffic control records, whereas nine North American citizens signed into the Meridien hotel Porto.

- on 24 August 2003, flight N313P (involved in the abduction of Khaled el-Masri) landed in Porto after arriving from Algiers and left 30 hours later for Baku (Azerbaijan), without air traffic control records detailing the number of passengers or crew members on board. Among the six North Americans who checked into the hotel in Porto, three have had arrest warrants issued against them in Italy and Germany.

A number of further testimonies, references to well-documented rendition cases with apparent links to the Portuguese stop-overs, and suspicious circumstances (seven of 13 CIA agents against whom arrest warrants were issued by German judges figure among crew members of the civilian flights in question), are mentioned in Gomes' plea for investigations to be resumed. Gomes challenges the claim in the conclusions of the order for the investigation to be shelved that suggests that even if it were confirmed that the CIA operated flights in Portugal for the transport of prisoners, this would not "constitute, in itself, any criminal illegal act". In fact, beyond applicable agreements on extradition and prisoner transfer, she argues that "the presence in Portuguese territory of prisoners illegally taken from their countries of origin, subjected to torture or other degrading treatment, and carried to a prison operating outside of international law -whether in Guantánamo or elsewhere- constitutes an illegal act".

The conclusions by the PGR note that the passage of the 94 flights through Portugal was confirmed, with 148 crew members or passengers identified, and a number of companies about which "no elements in the acts allow to establish any relation between these companies and North American public bodies, namely the CIA". Moreover, even if the link were established (and documents submitted to the EP's Commission on renditions point in this direction), it would not constitute an illegal act and nor would prisoner transfers. The presence of "state flights" for which the MNE denies granting authorisation is dismissed as a fraudulent practice by flight operators to obtain landing slots, and it is argued that all "legally established procedures were carried out and complied with". Thus, there is insufficient evidence of the reported crimes having been committed on Portuguese territory in the context of "extraordinary renditions", nor of any "direct or indirect" involvement of Portuguese officials in these facts, and there is no scope for further inquiries into this matter.

The specific cases reported are dismissed on differing grounds: in Abdurahman Khadr's case, because although a technical stopover in Portugal did take place on 7 November 2003, he flew as a paid CIA informant rather than as a detainee (disregarding the fact that in the same document the PGR cites, Khadr says that his co-operation was a way to seek to escape following detention, torture and ill-treatment that almost drove him to commit suicide); as for the "Bosnian 6" case, any relevance to the case is dismissed on the basis of the only connection having been based on the fact that the same aircraft used for their transport to Guantanamo through Turkey from Bosnia stopped in Portugal on several occasions; again, in Britel's case, the PGR dismisses any Portuguese responsibility because the aircraft stopped over in Portugal during its return from Morocco after his rendition from Pakistan; the same applies to Maher Arar's case, with the aircraft used for his rendition to Syria (through Rome, another interesting claim by Arar himself included in the investigation, into which no inquiries have been conducted in Italy) landing in the Azores on the next day on its arrival from Athens, having stopped in Portugal on seven occasions, for none of which material is available to conclude that facts of relevance for criminal law may have been enacted; the aircraft used for Khaled El Masri's abduction from Macedonia and transport to Afghanistan, operated by a company suspected of being a CIA front, also landed on several occasions in Portugal; the same applies to the aircraft that took Abu Omar to Egypt following his kidnapping in Milan, without either of these cases involving concrete penal implications for acts committed on Portuguese territory.

Conclusion

Overall, the document submitted by Ana Gomes challenges investigation's findings, suggesting that there has been a wilful failure to investigate a number of key aspects, although it has served to confirm a number of suspicious facts in relation to the flights that have come under scrutiny. Beyond the questions of the blanket clearance granted allowing the transport of "contentious material and people" and of political responsibility for enabling the practice of renditions to be carried out, which includes kidnapping, torture and conduct that would be classified as "terrorist" had it not been carried out by state agencies of a country involved in the "war against terrorism", the matter of the control of flights into and out of an EU country, and of the people transported in them, is a further matter of concern. At a time when the EU is implementing heightened passenger control mechanisms that give off the impression that anyone travelling or boarding a flight is a suspect and potential threat (see "The Surveillance of travel where everyone is a suspect", Statewatch, vol. 18 no. 1, January-March 2008), we have a case of blanket clearance and a failure to record basic facts about flights and passengers that are [probably] known to be involved in unlawful acts.

Sources

Complaint filed by Ana Gomes - Jardim/Sampaio/Magalhaes e Silva e Associados Sociedade de Advogados, DCIAP, Seçcao Unica, Proc. No. 3/07.4TELSB, June 2009. (pdf, Portuguese)

Findings of the investigation by the Procuradoria-Geral da República, 29.5.2009 (pdf, Portuguese)

"Reprieve submission to Portuguese inquiry on renditions", April 2008:
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2008/oct/eu-cia-portugal-reprieve.pdf

"The journey of death: over 700 prisoners illegally rendered to Guantanamo with the help of Portugal", 28.1.2008.

http://www.statewatch.org/news/2008/jan/reprieve-journey-of-death-guantanamo-portugal.pdf ]
Previous Statewatch coverage:

Renditions/Spain: Damning evidence surfaces of Aznar government collusion in Guantánamo flights, Statewatch News Online, December 2008

Portugal: Renditions: Judicial investigation into CIA flights begins, Statewatch News Online, February 2007

Portugal: Renditions: Authorities accused of not cooperating with EP committee as details surface of more Guántanamo flights, Statewatch News Online, December 2006

Portugal: Evidence of illegal CIA rendition flights surfacing, Statewatch News Online, October 2006

EU-US: Portuguese government admits knowledge of CIA flights, Statewatch News online, September 2006.