Spain: Guantánamo Bay stopovers in Spain confirmed
01 November 2008
The Spanish Ministry of Defence has confirmed that one of the flights suspected of carrying prisoners detained in Afghanistan in 2002 to Guantánamo Bay stopped at the US airbase at Rota (Cádiz) en route to the prison, as
El País newspaper reported on 6 September 2008. The Permanent Hispanic-North American Committee provided documentation to judge Ismael Moreno of the
Audiencia Nacional, who is conducting an investigation (see Statewatch Vol. 18 no 1), confirming that a C-17 aircraft (RCH 319Y) landed in Rota and stopped for several hours before taking off again towards the US base in Cuba.
Reprieve, the UK-based organisation working on renditions whose lawyers represent several Guantánamo detainees, claims that around 20 people unlawfully detained in Afghanistan and Pakistan were on board the aircraft.
Stopovers by other flights at the US airbase in Morón de la Frontera (Seville) and the Spanish base in Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid) were also confirmed. Another stopover (on 11 January 2002) in Morón, inferred from data provided by the Portuguese air traffic control authorities, was denied, as it was claimed that it only passed through Spanish airspace over the Strait of Gibraltar. This flight (RCH7502) was identified by Reprieve as the one that carried the first 23 prisoners to the Guantánamo detention camp. While AENA (
Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea, the Spanish airport and air traffic authority) previously denied any knowledge of this stopover, it now reportedly argues that it has no record of it, but this may have been because its databases gather information on general air traffic, and this is not the case for operational military air traffic. On the other hand, its records do contain data concerning 49 other flights by US aircraft heading for Guantánamo.
Subsequent documentation submitted to Moreno by the Defence Ministry explained that the majority of flights between Guantánamo and the airbases on Spanish territory in Rota, Morón de la Frontera and Torrejón de Ardoz were alleged to fall under the category of “providing logistical support”. Moreover, it acknowledges that permission was granted for 13 stopovers in Spanish territory (of which 12 are recognised as having occurred), and a further 13 flights passed through Spanish airspace, over the Strait of Gibraltar. However, this data only refers to flights by the US Air Force which operate under the terms of a bilateral agreement, unlike CIA flights which are civil flights under the guise of commercial entities acting as front companies to cover their real purpose. The authorised flights were described as “providing logical support”, “transporting US personnel”, “transporting US defence department personnel”, “transporting US military forces and material”, and “providing operational support”. The two flights that carried prisoners did not travel to Guantánamo, but proceeded from there, carrying Moroccan national Lahcen Ikassrien to Madrid (in a C-17 on 18 July 2005) to be questioned by judge Baltasar Garzón in connection with the 11 March 2004 terrorist attack, and a C-20 that stopped over in Palma de Mallorca on 30 September 2005 and carried a detainee extradited from the US naval base in Cuba to Cairo.
Miguel González, in an article in
El País (6 October 2008), notes that it is unusual for logistical support flights to travel from Spain to Guantánamo, when the latter is only 800 km away from US bases in Florida. Changes to the 1989 bilateral defence agreement between the US and Spain adopted in 2002 made controls on US aircraft using Rota and Morón airbases less stringent, replacing prior notification for a “general quarterly authorisation”, while ruling out the transport of goods or passengers that “may be controversial for Spain” (see
Statewatch Vol. 18 no 1). The Pentagon wrote to the Spanish defence ministry in 2007 to guarantee that its flights that stopped over in Spain had complied with this requirement, and a similar assurance (in writing) was required by the Spanish defence ministry before it authorised two further flights to stop in Rota en route to Guantánamo in 2007. Nonetheless, Reprieve claims that the second flight on the list submitted by the defence ministry, a C-17 that stopped in Rota on 28 October 2002, carried at least two minors, the Afghan Shams Ullah and the Canadian Omar Khard, who were taken to Guantánamo after being detained in Afghanistan.
El País, 6.9, 6.10.08.