Spain investigates alleged CIA detainee flights

A judge is investigating allegations the CIA used a Spanish airport as a base for transporting Islamic terrorism suspects, Spanish Interior Minister José Antonio Alonso said yesterday.

Several Spanish newspapers yesterday reported allegations that the US intelligence agency had used the airport of Son Sant Joan on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca as a base of operations from early 2004 to early 2005.

The Spanish government had no knowledge of the alleged flights but a judge was investigating them, Mr Alonso told Spanish television channel Telecinco.

"If it were confirmed that this is true, we would be looking at very serious, intolerable deeds because they break the basic rules of treating people in a democratic legal and political system," he said.

Defence Minister José Bono said there was no evidence, so he would not make accusations against Washington.

"We have no evidence, we have no proof, so I am not prepared to put a friendly, allied government on the spot on the basis of supposition and rumour," he told reporters.

The Washington Post reported this month that the CIA had been holding and interrogating al Qaeda captives at a secret facility in eastern Europe as part of a covert prison system established after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Spain's El Pais newspaper quoted government sources yesterday as saying that Spain's intelligence service had asked the CIA before the summer to avoid using Spanish territory for transferring prisoners who had been detained illegally.

The Mallorca flights were brought to light earlier this year by a local newspaper, the Diario de Mallorca, and led a group of local residents to file a legal complaint with the Spanish authorities over alleged illegal detention, kidnapping and torture, El Pais newspaper reported.

As a result of the complaint, prosecutors asked the police to carry out an investigation, El Pais reported.

This found that four planes had made at least 10 stops at the Mallorca airport between January 2004 and January 2005.

One flight arrived from Algiers on January 22, 2004 and took off next day for Macedonia. There, it "allegedly" picked up a German man, Khaled el-Masri, and took him to a prison in Kabul, according to El Pais.

Lebanese-born Mr Masri says he was kidnapped by US agents in Macedonia and held for months in an Afghan jail before being freed in Albania. He is close to filing a civil suit in a US court to claim compensation, his lawyer said in Germany last week.

Other flights went to and from Libya and from Bucharest to Washington, El Pais said.

The Spanish police report reached no conclusions about the purpose of the flights. A local judge decided the case was outside his jurisdiction and forwarded it to Spain's High Court, El Pais said.

A US Embassy spokesman had no comment.