To begin with, the subject came up in yesterday's State Department daily press briefing:

QUESTION: There is a new problem with the secret prisons.

MR. ERELI: Oh?

QUESTION: Because now the Spanish Government is probing some news about the fact that U.S. secretly used an airport in Spain to transfer prisoners. And they say it would be very serious. It would be -- they are apparently not happy at all. So I wanted to know if you think you can carry on denying it happened and if you can still say it doesn't have any impact on your foreign policy?

MR. ERELI: I don't have any comment.

QUESTION: Are you going to cooperate in the investigation?

MR. ERELI: I'm not aware that we've been asked -- we've been approached on this issue and so at this point it's a hypothetical.

QUESTION: Well now there's an investigation going on and it's about U.S. activity, so they'll obviously have to look into what you are doing and in the past, Sean has said that I think that you would be open to helping in any investigation. Are you going to --

MR. ERELI: I don't think -- I don't know -- let me put it this way, I've seen press reports, I'm not aware that there's been any official contact between the Government of Spain and the Government of the United States on this matter. Spain is a friend and NATO ally of the United States and our relations will be guided by those principles.

QUESTION: The Spanish Government said today that it would be intolerable if it were true. And so it would ask for a response at government level. So you would have --

MR. ERELI: Let me check and see. I don't know that we've been -- as I said to your colleague, I'm not aware that we've been officially approached by the Government of Spain.

Basically a lot of "nothing".

El Pais, whose articles rapidly go into "subscriber only" mode, had 3 articles on the subject today. I've translated them below, and as always, all errors are entirely mine. First article:

The American Government Assures That Spain Has Not Contacted It About This Case

A State Department spokesperson reminds everyone that the case is still hypothetical

The United States government has not received any request for information from Spain about the alleged use of the airport in Palma de Mallorca by the CIA to transfer alleged terrorists, according to what the American State Department spokesperson Adam Ereli said during a press conference yesterday morning.

Asked if his country is cooperating with the Spanish government in the investigation, Ereli said "I'm not aware that there's been any official contact between the Government of Spain and the Government of the United States on this matter." In the same way, when he was asked if his government would cooperate with the Spanish government in the investigation, he said: "I have read the reports in the press. We are monitoring this issue - this is still a hypothetical".

That being said, and after repeating that there has "not been any official contact between the governments of Spain and the United States about this issue," Ereli confirmed that "Spain is a friend and NATO ally of the United States and our relations will be guided by those principles".

The next El Pais article uses a little slang:

Bono Asks That the U.S. Not Be "Tarred and Feathered" for "Mere Suspicions"

Yesterday the Minister of Defense, Jose Bono, closed ranks with the American government after the reports about the presumed transit by CIA airplanes via Spanish airports to transfer illegally detained people. "We don't have any evidence, not even a little, that shows illegal activities, or furthermore any indication of acts of a criminal nature. I am not going to tar and feather an allied government on suspicions and rumors", he said before Congress.

Bono, who admitted he spoke yesterday morning with the American Ambassador in Madrid, Eduardo Aguirre, said he was not disposed to "inflame any anti-American sentiment". "To defend allied and friendly countries is not only something I do with pleasure, but it is an obligation of the Defense Minister," he added.

He stated that the Guardia Civil's report about the 10 suspicious flights that took place in the airport of Son Sant Joan (Palma de Mallorca) in 2004 and January 2005 did not contain "anything relevant in terms of criminal actions" and denied that the CNI [Spanish defense intelligence agency] had asked the CIA to not use Spain for illegal operations. "I have spoken with the director of the CNI (Alberto Saiz) and this request to the CIA did not take place, at as far as he and I, the CNI Director and Minister of Defense, are aware of," he assured.

Government sources told El Pais that before last summer, when the flights had taken place in Mallorca, agents of the CNI had asked their counterparts in the CIA to not use Spanish territory for these operations.

The CIA has never officially admitted connection to these flights, but took note of the Spanish position and the warning that any kind of incident (such as a health problem or death of an irregular passenger during a flight) could cause a diplomatic problem, said our sources.

Intolerable Acts

Yesterday on Tele5, the Interior Minister, Jose Antonio Alonso, said that "if it is confirmed that it was certain [that illegally detained persons transited Spanish airports], we would be speaking of grave acts, of acts that could not be tolerated at all because they break the laws of how prisoners must be treated in a democratic system".

Asked about the government's response in such a case that could be confirmed, he stated that "the response is evident, at the level of relations between government, it would be the work for judges, etc. It is certain that the Constitution and the laws of our state must be applied, those of a sovereign nation".

Alonso insisted that, in any event, the government "has no certainty" of the truthfulness of the claim and that "prudence" must be maintained until the investigation can be concluded.

Interesting....

But now it looks like the case has widened. From El Pais once again:

The Canary Island Government Requests Information about CIA Flights in Tenerife

The planes under investigation in Palma de Mallorca also landed 4 times in the Canary Islands

The flights investigated by the Guardia Civil in Palma de Mallorca, allegedly used by the CIA to transfer prisoners related to Islamic terrorism, also landed at least once in Ibiza and four times in the Reina Sofia airport in Tenerife, according to information confirmed by airport authorities. Yesterday the Canary Island government assured that it will request an explanation of the national government about these flights, according to a statement by the spokesperson of the Canary Island government, Miguel Becerra (of the Canary Coalition).

On April 7, 2005, the Canary Coalition spokesperson in Congress, Paulino Rivero, asked the Interior Minister, Jose Antonio Alonso, if he knew about these flights. "There is no information that the Canary Islands were used as a base to illegally transport people, alleged terrorists, by any country," was the response given to the nationalists from the Interior Ministry. The document [parliamentary response] added, "These activities are declared illegal by our laws and furthermore the Spanish authorities do not accept such acts in their territory, independent of who is involved".

Miguel Becerra yesterday stated that, while the Interior Ministry had given this response, "the CNI knew" about these practices. "It is one more demonstration of the blindness [lack of information given] that Madrid shows us with respect to questions of security that occurred in our territory, to the point where we have to learn about them through the press", he stated.

The airplanes allegedly used by the CIA that landed in Palma de Mallorca, which were investigated by the Guardia Civil, also landed in at least two airports on the island of Tenerife on five incidents between March 2004 and May 2005, according to a report published by La Opinion de Tenerife. The information from AENA [airport authorities] given to that paper indicate that in 2004 there were at least 5 landings by Gulfstream 15-seat airliners, whose passenger list is unknown, and that the airplane was on the runway for at least 20 hours. According to the filed flight plan, in two occasions the planes were headed to Rabat [capital of Morocco]. On another two occasions, they were returning from the Moroccan capital heading towards Washington, D.C.

On the other hand, yesterday the chief prosecutor in Baleares stated that the airplanes allegedly used by CIA agents to transfer international terrorism detainees that made at least 10 flights into Palma de Mallorca "were absolutely normal" and "nothing strange or suspicious was seen in their interior". That's what the prosecutor general of the Baleares, Bartolome Barcelo, said yesterday after his investigation into what maintenance companies had seen who had boarded those airplanes.

Yet the prosecutor denied that he had requested the file of an open case from Palma, filed on behalf of several Mallorca citizens, but that the Audiencia Nacional judge would not be the right court to handle the case and decide which crimes to investigate as well as their potential authors and victims.

By doing this, Barcelo wants to demonstrate his willingness to follow "any path" in a new investigation, if anything of substance is discovered he "would support it".

Barcelo spoke before the press to clarify his position as a public minister in this case, repeating that his March investigation was "exhaustive" concerning "the crew, passengers on the plane and the hotels where they stayed", which was done by the Guardia Civil, but that he had arrived "at a dead end", that "it was exhausted" and the case was closed. Later, a group of citizens filed a lawsuit and the judge produced the report that the prosecutor had prepared. At the beginning of October, the judge decided against moving the case to the Audiencia Nacional for reasons of territorial jurisdiction in this presumably criminal case, a move supported by Barcelo. As a result, the case continues in Palma.

Barcelo stated that the investigation into planes of a foreign country "is a complicated issue" because of reasons of "territorial jurisdiction". For him, only a judge in cases of danger to a person's life or with knowledge of felony crimes against people can open a case into what occurs inside a foreign airplane.

So I'm not quite sure what's going to happen with this. And last but not least, from El Mundo:

Alonso and the CIA Director Will Give Congress Explanations About Secret CIA Flights

The Minister of the Interior, Jose Antonio Alonso, and the director of the CIA will testify in front of the Commision [on finance, more or less] to explain about the alleged use of Spanish airports for CIA flights to transfer alleged terrorists. This testimony, whose date has yet been finalized, was requested by the Izquierda Unida [party].

The parliamentary group Green Left IU-ICV presented the summons for Alonso, as director of the CNI, so he could explain "the use of the airport of Sant Joan de Palma in Mallorca or other Spanish airports by the Central Intelligence Agency for "kidnapping" or illegal detainment operations outside the bases of law of persons allegedly connected to Islamic terrorism".

According to the IU, once the summons was requested, the testimony will then be "automatically" compulsive.

Yesterday, the head of the Interior Ministry spoke about these secret flights that different media has been reporting on the past few months and assured that security agencies "had investigated" this case and that it is now "in the hands of the judge".

The same night, a spokesperson of the American State Department stated that the Spanish government had not been in contact with the United Stats to ask for information about the alleged flights out of the airport in Mallorca by the CIA to transfer prisoners.

On March 16, 2005, the prosecutor of the Baleares Superior Court opened an investigation to verify if any crime had been committed in the flights through the Palma airport by CIA "prison planes" which allegedly transfered terrorists arrested in an irregular manner.

I should mention that Spain has several offshore "provinces". One is the Balearic Islands, which includes Palma de Mallorca. A separate province is the Canary Islands. Both are part of Spanish territory, the same way Hawai'i is part of the United States.

The investigation shall continue...

Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 of this series.

Peace