Exclusive: CIA Torture flight takes off from UK

London Mirror
Feb. 08, 2006

A SECRET "torture flight" CIA plane climbs high into the sky after taking off from a military airfield in England.

The Boeing C-32B - one of a fleet allegedly used to transport terror suspects to interrogation camps -had spent two hours refuelling after arriving from the Middle East.

US military officials at the RAF base said it was an American Special Operations Squadron flight. A US Air Force spokeswoman in Florida would only say last night: "This was an aircraft on a training mission."

The MoD added: "Under UK and international law, carriers on technical operations are not obliged to provide passenger lists or obtain permission to refuel."

The plane - the military version of the Boeing 757 passenger jet - was at RAF Mildenhall, in Suffolk, a hub for the United States Air Force, between 12.25pm and 2.45pm last Saturday, before departing for the Wright-Patterson airfield in Dayton, Ohio.

The American Special Operations Squadron works closely with the CIA and FBI.

C-32Bs - which carry very few markings due to the secret nature of their missions - were said to be used to transfer captured al-Qaeda suspects to top secret CIA prisons in countries with unscrupulous human rights records in order not to break the law by torturing them on US soil.

The camps, known as "black sites", are believed to be in Poland - an ex-Soviet spy base dubbed Guantanamo Gulag - Romania, Afghanistan and Thailand.

Prisoners have claimed techniques used by the CIA agents included slapping and simulated drowning to get them to crack.