Following on from the theme of my last post, Newsweek has uncovered details of The CIA's transport of prisoners around the globe for interrogation. The article tells the story of Khaled el-Masri.

Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was taken off a bus in Macedonia in south-central Europe while on holiday on Dec. 31, 2003, then whisked in handcuffs to a motel outside the capital city of Skopje. Three weeks later, on the evening of Jan. 23, 2004, he was brought blindfolded aboard a jet with engines noisily revving, according to his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic. Masri says he climbed high stairs "like onto a regular passenger airplane" and was chained to clamps on the bare metal floor and wall of the jet.

Masri says he was then flown to Afghanistan, where at a U.S. prison facility he was shackled, repeatedly punched and questioned about extremists at his mosque in Ulm, Germany. Finally released months later, the still-mystified Masri was deposited on a deserted road leading into Macedonia, where he brokenly tried to describe his nightmarish odyssey to a border guard. "The man was laughing at me," Masri told The New York Times, which disclosed his story last month. "He said: 'Don't tell that story to anyone because no one will believe it. Everyone will laugh'."
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The new evidence supporting Masri's case will only inflame the debate. According to data filed with European aviation authorities, the Boeing 737 landed in Skopje on Jan. 23, 2004, after a flight from the island of Majorca off Spain (a U.S.-friendly government), and left that night. Masri's passport has a Macedonian exit stamp for Jan. 23. The flight plan shows that the plane landed the next day in Baghdad and then went onto Kabul, Afghanistan, on Jan. 25, which also conforms to Masri's account. According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the jet was owned at the time by Premier Executive Transport Services, a now-defunct Massachusetts-based company that U.S. intelligence sources acknowledge to NEWSWEEK fits the profile of a suspected CIA front.

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.
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U.S. officials insist the CIA has stopped rendering suspects to countries where they believe torture occurs. NEWSWEEK has learned that shortly after a Canadian jihadi suspect of Syrian origin, Maher Arar, was shipped back to Syria in September 2002, officials began having grave second thoughts about rendering suspects to that nation. As a result, the administration made a secret decision to stop sending suspects to Syria. But officials acknowledge that such scruples are being ignored when it comes to rendering suspects to allies like Egypt and Jordan, even though some officials do not believe "assurances" from these nations that they were not mistreating prisoners. Now the CIA may have to supply many more assurances—and Khaled el-Masri, among others, is waiting for them.