Jat Airways was the national flag carrier and largest airline of Yugoslavia and later Serbia and Montenegro and Serbia. Founded in 1927 as Aeroput, the airline ceased operations during World War II. After resuming flights in 1947, the airline was renamed Jugoslovenski Aerotransport on 1 April 1947. The airline was renamed again on 8 August 2003. Jat Airways and their predecessors were one of the oldest airlines still in operation. Flight operations were based at Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport, and the airline operated scheduled services to 72 international destinations, outside the areas formerly part of Yugoslavia, as well as charters and wet leases. Jat Airways was owned by the government of Serbia and had 1,250 employees.
Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored kidnapping 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.
Adam Air was a privately owned airline based in West Jakarta, Jakarta, Indonesia. It operated scheduled domestic services to over 20 cities and international services to Penang and Singapore. Its main base was Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Jakarta.
SCAT Airlines, legally PLL SCAT Air Company, is a Kazakh civil airline. Its head office on located in Shymkent International Airport in Şymkent, Kazakhstan. It operates services to all major cities of Kazakhstan and its neighboring countries. Its main base is Şymkent Airport, with focus cities at Aqtau International Airport, Nursultan Nazarbayev International Airport, and Almaty International Airport.
Aero Contractors Ltd., was a private charter company which was based in Smithfield, North Carolina, and was said by some to have provided discreet air transport services for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, also referred to as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam Mohammed or Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi, is an Ethiopian national and United Kingdom resident, who was detained as a suspected enemy combatant by the US Government in Guantanamo Bay prison between 2004 and 2009 without charges. He was arrested in Pakistan and transported first to Morocco under the US's extraordinary rendition program, where he claimed to have been interrogated under torture.
Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the U.S. government is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies. Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the CIA was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide.
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.
In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. A 2021 Associated Press news story defined black sites as "clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with a crime and have no legal recourse, with no bail or court order."
Air transports for heads of state and government are, in many countries, provided by the air force in specially equipped airliners or business jets. One such aircraft in particular has become part of popular culture: Air Force One, used by the President of the United States and operated by the United States Air Force. Other well known official aircraft include the Russian presidential aircraft, the British Royal Air Force VIP aircraft, the French Cotam 001, the Royal Canadian Air Force VIP aircraft, the German Konrad Adenauer, the Royal Australian Airforce VIP aircraft, the Japanese Air Force One, the South Korean Code One, Air India One, the Brazilian Air Force One, and the Israeli Wing of Zion.
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.
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.
US Airways had a variety of aircraft liveries under both its US Airways and USAir names. Its Express and Shuttle divisions had liveries that generally closely paralleled the company-wide livery at the time. The US Airways livery has phased out, with aircraft baring it having been either retired or repainted with the American Airlines livery following with their merger. A single Airbus A321 formerly operated by US Airways currently retains the livery, as a tribute to the former airline by American.
Stephen Grey is a British investigative journalist and special correspondent for Reuters. He received the 2006 Joe and Laurie Dine Award from the Overseas Press Club for his book Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program.
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.
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.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya. On 10 March 2019, the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft which operated the flight crashed near the town of Bishoftu six minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 people aboard.
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.
