US-authorities prove to be much more open about the controversial rendition flights run by the CIA than their European counterparts. Sweden which helped CIA to imprison and torture two Egyptian citizens in 2001 sticks out as a non-informative country.

A new report published by Access-Info Europe and legal action charity Reprieve demonstrates a very wide pattern of adherence to the principle of access to documents amongst allies to the USA.
In response to Access Info Europe’s requests, the USA’s Federal Aviation Authority released 27,128 flight records on 29 November 2011 – a significant addition to resources available to researchers and lawyers working to get to the bottom of human rights abuses committed during the “war on terror”.
But only five European nations – Denmark, Finland, Germany, Lithuania and Norway – provided similar information.

Reprieve investigator Crofton Black said:
“It’s a shocking indictment of European complacency that, while the USA will gladly release over 27,000 records, Europe’s air traffic manager Eurocontrol won’t even release one. It’s equally unacceptable that countries such as Austria, France, Italy, Latvia, Romania, and Spain simply ignore requests for data relating to serious human rights abuses. ”

“This report shows that there are no legitimate reasons why data about flights cannot be released,” said Lydia Medland, Researcher and Campaigner at Access Info Europe.
The research has also revealed that the data is not held indefinitely by air traffic control authorities: Denmark, Ireland, Slovenia and the UK have told the researchers that data is destroyed after around five years. In some countries the data is held by private bodies which have no obligation to the public to retain it.
“It is imperative that the data be made public before it is destroyed, in order to permit full accountability for these violations of human rights,” added Medland.

Besides Canada, Portugal and Sweden outright refused to give access and are thus marked red on the map in the report. The same goes for Eurocontrol, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air
Navigation, an independent intergovernmental organization comprising 39 member states, with headquarters in Brussels.
In the past, Eurocontrol has played a key role in investigations into renditions flights. Data from Eurocontrol was core to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly’s 2006 investigation lead by Dick Marty.
Eurocontrol also provided flight logs to the European Parliament’s “Temporary Committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of
prisoners”. In addition, in 2008 Eurocontrol disclosed over 150 pages of flight data in response to a Danish government
request.

The rendition flight came to the public's attention in 2005. The term covers the widespread use of private US-registered aircraft, illegally to transport (‘render’) individuals captured by the US and other governments in the context of the ‘war on terror’.
Prisoners transported by this method were routinely held in isolation and tortured, in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights, the United Nations Convention against Torture, the Geneva Conventions and the domestic laws of all European countries.

A grave example dates back to December 2001 were the Egyptians Mohammad Alzery and Ahmed Agiza were taken by force in Stockholm and flown to Egypt where they were tortured in prison.

Swedish security police SÄPO were accused for the high-jacking, but it was foreign minister Anna Lindh who was politicly responsible at the time. Anna Lindh was murdered in 2003.
This was later revealed by Kalla fakta (”Cold facts”) an investigative programme aired by Swedish TV4, and the reporters were given several rewards for the programme.

Governmental sources in Sweden now testifies to Swedish media that data for non-regular flights are covered by the Swedish Secrecy act and not available for access, in spite of the Swedish historical tradition for open government.
As the legal grounds for refusal seem a bit unclear this website has asked for a reasoned decision and a guidance on how to appeal the refusal given to Reprieve and Access-Info.

The two organisation behind the report states that all information accessed under this project will be collated and made
available by The Rendition Project, a joint research project between the University of Kent and Kingston University, funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council. 

Staffan Dahllöf