Aero Contractors Ltd., was a private charter company which was based in Smithfield, North Carolina, and was said by some[ who? ] to have provided discreet air transport services for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). [1]
The company was founded in 1979 by Jim Rhyne, a former pilot with Air America. The company has 26 planes and 79 employees and operates from the tiny Johnston Regional Airport. [2]
On May 31, 2005, The New York Times reported that the company was heavily involved in extraordinary rendition, the transport of terrorism suspects to countries where they can be interrogated to extract information. An Aero Contractors plane was used in the transport of Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen who was pulled from a bus on the Serbia-Macedonia border and held for three weeks. He was drugged and beaten before being flown to Afghanistan on a Boeing Business Jet operated by Aero Contractors. El-Masri was released after five months. [3]
Aero Corporations allegedly operates under several different shell companies, including Stevens Express Leasing, Inc., Premier Executive Transport Services, Aviation Specialties, Inc., Aero LLC (Wyoming)[ citation needed ] and Devon Holding and Leasing, Inc. [2]
A book published in September 2006, Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA Rendition Flights [4] includes many details about Aero Contractors' involvement in extraordinary rendition.
In September 2018, the North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture released a report entitled Torture Flights: North Carolina’s Role in the CIA Rendition and Torture Program which detailed the history of the airport's activities with the rendition, detention and interrogation and the suggested CIA shell companies involved. The report is available on their website format. [5]
North American Airlines, Inc., was an American airline with its headquarters at the HLH Building in Peachtree City, Georgia in Greater Atlanta, United States. Prior to May 2008, it operated scheduled international services from the U.S. to Africa and Guyana. Later it operated domestic and international charter services and wet lease services. Its main aircraft and maintenance base was Tampa International Airport.
Atlas Air, Inc. is a major American cargo airline, passenger charter airline, and aircraft lessor based in Purchase, New York. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings. Atlas Air is the world's largest operator of the Boeing 747 aircraft, with a total fleet of 54 of this specific fleet type. In 2021, the airline had 4,056 employees and operated to more than 300 global destinations.
Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored forcible abduction in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had the purpose of circumventing the source country's laws on interrogation, detention, extradition and/or torture. Extraordinary rendition is a type of extraterritorial abduction, but not all extraterritorial abductions include transfer to a third country.
This page describes several aircraft that are alleged in media reports to have been used in the practice of extraordinary rendition, the extralegal transfer of prisoners from one country to another.
Kelowna Flightcraft Air Charter trading as KF Cargo and Kelowna Flightcraft trading as KF Maintenance and Engineering is a cargo airline based in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. It operates long term cargo charters for couriers and freight companies, forest fire patrols, and aircraft sales and leasing in Canada and worldwide. It also provides maintenance and aircraft manufacturing services.
Khaled El-Masri is a German and Lebanese citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police in 2003, and handed over to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While in CIA custody, he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was held at a black site and routinely interrogated, beaten, strip-searched, sodomized, and subjected to other cruel forms of inhumane and degrading treatment and torture. After El-Masri held hunger strikes, and was detained for four months in the "Salt Pit", the CIA finally admitted his arrest was a mistake and released him. He is believed to be among an estimated 3,000 detainees, including several key leaders of al Qaeda, whom the CIA captured from 2001 to 2005, in its campaign to dismantle terrorist networks.
Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights is a 2006 book by A. C. Thompson and Trevor Paglen documenting the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.
Rendition is a 2007 American political thriller film directed by Gavin Hood and starring Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard, Alan Arkin, and Omar Metwally. It centers on the controversial CIA practice of extraordinary rendition and is based on the true story of Khalid El-Masri, who was mistaken for Khalid al-Masri.
iAero Airways, previously Swift Air, is an American airline based in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States. It operates charter flights for nationally known fractional aircraft operators, financial institutions, construction and transportation as well as many collegiate athletic departments, professional sports organizations, and major tour operators. It is also a major contractor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, operating many of the agency's deportation flights as well as flights transporting detainees between immigration detention facilities within the United States. The airline also provides aircraft management services for private owners. Its main hub is Miami International Airport.
Osubi Airstrip is an aviation facility located in Osubi, within Okpe Local Government, serving the city of Effurun, Warri and its environs in Delta State, Nigeria. It is about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) northeast of the city.
Aéropro was an air charter, aircraft maintenance and airport management company with its headquarters on the grounds of Québec City Jean Lesage International Airport in Sainte-Foy, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. It conducted business charters and recreational and sightseeing flights across the province of Quebec. Its main base is located at Québec City Jean Lesage International Airport. The company manages several airports in Quebec.
Tepper Aviation, Inc. was a privately held aviation company operating a fleet of Lockheed L-100 Hercules aircraft and was one of the largest civilian operators of L-100/L-382 aircraft. The airline may have suspended operations in 2006. On October 11, 2016 Tepper filed papers changing its name to Gulf Air Group, effective in 2017. In 2019, Gulf Air Group opened the Covington Maintenance Center at Southern Alabama Regional Airport in Andalusia, Alabama.
Premier Executive Transport Services was an airline listed as Foreign Corporation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is alleged to be a front company for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to investigative journalists the company does not have any offices or premises, and searches of public records for identifying information about the company's officers have yielded only post office boxes in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., and also known as P LLC in Wyoming.
Wycombe Air Park, also known as Booker Airfield, is an operational general aviation aerodrome located in Booker, Buckinghamshire, 2.4 nautical miles south-west of High Wycombe, England. The airfield celebrated its 50th year of opening on 25 April 2015. It originally opened in 1941 as RAF Booker and was primarily involved in training during World War II, remaining a military establishment until 1965.
St. Lucia Airways Limited was a privately owned company founded in 1975. General and tourist flights were operated mainly to Martinique and Barbados, but also extended throughout the Caribbean and South America. There was also a shuttle service between the two St. Lucia airports of Vigie and Hewannora. A Boeing 707 was acquired in 1982 for cargo charter work. Head office was listed as PO Box 253, Castries, St. Lucia, West Indies.
RusLine is a regional airline from Russia, which operates mostly domestic regional flights, as well as holiday charters. Its headquarters are located in the Omega Plaza business centre in Moscow, Russia.
Jaled el Masri is a citizen of Syria who was subjected to the American program of extraordinary rendition and held in extrajudicial detention in the CIA's network of black sites. Jaled el Masri is reported to have been apprehended by a clandestine CIA team in January 2004, in Skopje, Macedonia. Jaled el Masri is reported to have been tortured by the CIA in Afghanistan.
Alfreda Frances Bikowsky is a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who has headed the Bin Laden Issue Station and the Global Jihad unit. Bikowsky's identity is not publicly acknowledged by the CIA, but was deduced by independent investigative journalists in 2011. In January 2014, the Washington Post named her and tied her to a pre-9/11 intelligence failure and the extraordinary rendition of Khalid El-Masri. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, released in December 2014, showed that Bikowsky was not only a key part of the torture program but also one of its chief apologists, resulting in the media's giving her the moniker "The Unidentified Queen of Torture."
Amazon Air is a cargo airline operating exclusively to transport Amazon packages. In 2017, it changed its name from Amazon Prime Air to Amazon Air to differentiate themselves from their Amazon Prime Air autonomous drone delivery service. However, the Prime Air logo remains on the aircraft. Until January 2021, the airline had relied on wet-leasing its aircraft from other operators, but going forward it is looking to directly own some aircraft. On the planes the airline owns, the airline will still rely on others for CMI leases.
CIA black sites refer to the black sites that are controlled by the CIA and used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain enemy combatants.