Secret CIA Flights to Greenland Reported
By GABRIEL GABIRO
Associated Press Writer
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark will investigate claims that the CIA secretly used an airport on the Nordic country’s remote Arctic territory of Greenland to transport prisoners in the U.S. war on terror, the prime minister said Thursday.
Denmark, like many other European countries, began investigating reports in 2005 that the U.S. intelligence agency quietly touched down on their territory as part of the CIA’s so-called “extraordinary rendition” program.
Human rights groups have criticized the practice, in which suspects are transported for interrogation to countries outside the U.S. for interrogation.
A Danish TV documentary broadcast Wednesday by the DR1 TV network claimed that prisoner flights not only used mainland Denmark’s airports and airspace but also touched down on Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory between Europe and North America.
“In the light of the new information, we will be looking into what happened and if need be, we will ask the Americans for explanations,” Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. He said Denmark has previously informed the United States that any unauthorized use of its airspace was “unacceptable.”
Denmark is a NATO member and has had troops in the U.S.-led military coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the government has consistently denied any knowledge of secret CIA operations on Danish territory.
In 2005, the government confirmed that at least 14 flights by aircraft suspected of being used in the CIA program entered Danish airspace since 2001, but said it was not clear who was on board.
A February 2007 report by the European Parliament said at least 1,245 undeclared flights operated by the CIA flew into European airspace or stopped over at European airfields, including in Denmark, after the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001.
While it was not proven that detainees were on board, the report said many of the planes - often small jets - routinely transported terror suspects.
The CIA repeatedly has declined to comment on reports it has transported terror suspects through European countries.
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