Over 1000 CIA 'Torture Shuttle' flights crossed Europe

deutshewelle: The CIA has carried out more than 1,000 secret flights in Europe since 2001 without governments raising questions, an EU lawmaker trying to shed light on alleged kidnappings claimed Wednesday.

Despite evidence from the Eurocontrol air traffic body showing "more than 1,000 CIA flights" had gone through European airports and airspace, governments had shown "incriminating inertia," said Claudio Fava, who is leading a European Parliament inquiry into allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency secretly transported prisoners through EU territory in what have become know as extraordinary renditions.

"We think that after Sept.11, extraordinary renditions were not rare, but a practice that was very well known and wide-spread geographically," said Fava, an Italian Socialist.

European parliamentarians decided to set up a special committee to look into the allegations in January in parallel to a separate probe by the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe.

Washington has come under intense fire in the last few months after reports about hundreds of CIA flights, suspected of carrying undeclared prisoners across European airspace, since the Sept.11, 2001 terror attacks.

Because they do not have the authority to require individuals to appear before the committee, the EU lawmakers are relying on voluntary hearings and publicly available information.

Fava said that such voluntary hearings had confirmed that the CIA was "clearly responsible for the abduction and the detention of terrorists on the member states' territory." Read more