23 August 2006

BRUSSELS — A US investigative group that co-worked on Amnesty International's report over secret CIA renditions of terrorist suspects has compiled a new list detailing 25 suspicious flights that passed through Belgian airspace.

TransArms said official flight data indicates that private jets have landed at Zaventem Airport that were possibly involved in CIA transports of terrorist suspects to secret prisons, magazine 'Knack' reported.

The flights are considered suspicious because they involved aircraft that passed through airports that according to a Council of Europe report were known stopovers or final destinations of the US rendition programme.

Besides the list of 25 flights, there are also various flights carried out by Kalitta Air. The databanks or airplane spotters have revealed that the airline landed on multiple occasions each week at Zaventem and Bierset.

After the start of the war against Iraq in 2003, Kalitta Air received a special permit from the US government to carry out special military transports to Iraq. Amnesty claims the CIA regularly employs the services of Kalitta Air.

Knack passed the new details onto the Belgian government, which subsequently investigated the information. "Up until now, nothing suspicious has appeared," the security advisor of Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said.

"We have had the data in our possessions since Friday. Since then, the aviation inspectorate has been completely busy investigating where the suspicious flights came from and where they went," advisor Bruce De Ruyver continued.
 
There are no indications that either the 25 identified flights or the Kalitta Air flights involved the transport of suspected terrorists, newspaper 'De Morgen' reported on Wednesday.

"The only thing that we now need to do is inspect the passenger lists," De Ruyver said.

But he suspects that will not yield very much information either, stressing that the names will not indicate whether they are CIA passengers or not.

[Copyright Expatica News 2006]

Subject: Belgian news