We'll start as usual with El Pais. All translations are done by me and therefore all errors are solely mine.

Attorney General Demands Information about Alleged CIA Flights in Canary Islands

The government says two American planes were transporting repatriated Nigerians

Yesterday, the attorney general asked the prosecutors of the Superior Court in the Canary Islands and the court in Tenerife to send them "updated information" about the possible use of Canary airports in the alleged transfer of people to secret prisons via CIA flights. The attorney general, Candido Conde-Pumpido, announced he was ready to continue the investigation throughout all of Spain. Prosecutor Elvira Tejada, head of the Technical Secretariat, responded to demands by the IU [party] leader Gaspar Llamazares to be "permanently ready to conduct the investigation".

The request for "updated information" about the alleged CIA flights via Canary Islands airports signifies in effect that an investigation has begun by the attorney general's office, which before now has not undertaken one in the archipelago [Canary Islands], as opposed to its actions in the Balearic Islands.

Yesterday the newspaper La Provincia of Las Palmas published a report stating that at least 5 airplanes supposedly involved in the transfer of illegally detained people landed at the airport in Gando (Grand Canary Island) between January and October. According to this report, two of the planes came from Tan Tan (Morocco) and Pakistan. One of these planes had registration number N313P, the same as the one which landed 4 times in Palma de Mallorca and their own pilots described their flight, in radio communication to the air tower, as "a jail operation".

Yesterday, the Canary Island government confirmed only that two American flights, which were transporting deported Nigerians, landed in Gando between January and October.

In response to Llamazares' request for information about CIA flights, the prosecutor general of the Technical Secretariat explained in a letter to the IU leader dated yesterday that the prosecutor general of the Baleares, Bartolome Barcelo, had begun an investigation after receiving a lawsuit stating that the airport in Son Sant Joan had been used as a base for airplanes used to commit crimes in other countries.

The prosecutor assured that all possible leads were being followed and that the Guardia Civil had issued a report, but "it didn't end up being possible to confirm any evidence of the commission of criminal acts, according to the files on those activities". With hindsight however, a case was opened before a court in Palma de Mallorca, which had presided over earlier investigations.

Before this investigation, prosecutor Tejada made note that [Spanish] criminal law prohibits prosecutors from "opening investigations when an open case is already investigating the same acts". Because of this, "right now, given that court number 7 in Palma is investigating these acts, the attorney general is blocked from reopening an investigation that, furthermore, is under judicial review". That being said, the attorney general told Llamazares to "fully share his concern over these acts" and that they are working within the judicial system, that on October 26 they presented a petition before a judge to argue against his decision to block the case from being moved to the Audiencia Nacional. The objective, she said "is not to put an end to the investigation, only to request that the presiding judge not overlook the scope of all possible crimes allegedly committed, the persons who could potentially be responsible and possible victims".

The attorney general assured her willingness to "be always ready to assist, according to applicable national and international laws, the requests for collaboration by judicial authorities from other countries" and concluded by mentioning the possibility of expanding the investigation throughout all of Spain.

Whew ok that's a little dense and I had to use some shortcuts to make sense of what's being reported here. Spain has a much different judicial system than the United States and I took a little liberty in my translation to try and make it seem sensical.

Essentially, there is an "Attorney General" or national prosecutor's office, of which Elvira Tejada is the head of one division of that. And what she is saying is that Spanish law prohibits her from opening an investigation into the CIA flights when other prosecutors (in Canary Island and Balearic Islands) are already doing so.

In short, when a prosecutor wants to open a case they have to go in front of a judge. It's actually the judge who "directs" the investigation - perhaps "magistrate" would be a better translation. So at one point the Balearic case went before the directing judge (magistrate), who ruled against it being sent to the Audiencia Nacional. The AN is a special court in Spain which handles matters concerning the entire country or indeed events outside its borders. Tejada has officially asked that judge to reconsider that but can't force him to do so.

So right now there are two separate ongoing cases - the one in the Canary Islands (which includes Gando and Tenerife) and the one in the Balearic Islands (which include Palma de Mallorca). Should either of the director judges (magistrates) decide so, then the nationwide attorney general's office begin their own investigation.

A political map of Spain might be useful, which you can see here. The Balearic Islands are right off the eastern coast, and include the resort island of Ibiza. The Canaries are quite far away physically, off the western coast of Africa. Both the Balearic and Canary Islands are full provinces of Spain, the same way Hawai's is just as much a state as Oregon is. They are not "possessions" or "territories" - they are part of Spain.

Another one from El Pais:

Moratinos To Give Explanations to Congress Thursday

The Foreign Minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, is scheduled to testify next Thursday before the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs to give explanations concerning the use of Spanish airports by planes allegedly operated by the CIA to transfer illegally detained persons.

The Interior Minister, Jose Antonio Alonso, considers it "logical" that it will be Moratinos who testifies and not himself or the director of the CNI, Alberto Saiz, whose testimony before the committee had been requested by various groups. "When a minister testifies, he testifies for the entire government", argued Alonso, who promised "complete transparency" on this issue.

Before Moratinos' testimony, the Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero must answer, during the Wednesday session, a question submitted by the IU coordinator, Gaspar Llamazares. This was announced yesterday when Llamazares demanded an explanation as to why he had "blocked" and "boycotted" the investigation and insisted that he [Zapatero] maintain a "firm position" on this flagrant violation of human rights.

Yesterday, the American State Department's spokesperson, Adam Ereli, stated that the Assistant Secretary of European Affairs, Daniel Fried, discussed the subject with Moratinos on Wednesday in Madrid. The high ranking American told the Spanish minister that "there is absolutely no grounds for concern," said the [Spanish] government's spokesperson, Fernando Moraleda.

For his part, the Icelandic Foreign Minister, Geir Haarde, stated he was "unsatisfied" with Washington's response to his requests for information about CIA flights in his country. "The responses we've received about the question of whether or not there were prisoners on board left a lot of questions unanswered", he said to the Icelandic parliament, reported France Press.

So basically next Wednesday the Spanish PM has to give a formal answer to the IU leader on whether or not he "blocked" an investigation into the CIA flights issue. And then on Thursday, Moratinos will publically testify before Congress on the issue, and presumably be asked a lot of questions by some very upset MP's.

Icelandic-language article here. It's not a good idea to anger Geir Haarde and Iceland right now, because the two countries are negotiating a number of military issues, including the U.S. base in Keflavik.

Meanwhile Sweden is also conducting an investigation:

Sweden launched an investigation after reports that planes used by the US spy agency CIA landed at Swedish airports, the latest in a series of such probes by concerned European nations.

The government said it had opened a probe into a number of flights to and from several airports in the country since 2002.

The decision follows a report by the Swedish news agency TT on Monday that several presumed CIA planes had secretly touched down here. Similar reports have surfaced across Europe including Germany, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain.

Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson's office said in a statement it had 'asked the Civil Aviation Administration and the Civil Aviation Authority to investigate the circumstances around flights to and from Swedish airports conducted with aircraft registered in the US.'

The government requested the probe be completed by Dec 8 at the latest, but sources within the two aviation agencies said they expected to finish earlier.

Well that seems to be a good summary of the link I provided yesterday concerning Goeran Persson. Except yesterday I identified him incorrectly as the "Interior Minister" when he is actually the PM. My mistake!

Via Chinese state media:

Swedish political leaders have expressed outrage over reports that aircraft used by the CIA have touched down at several airports here over the past three years, Radio Sweden reported on Wednesday.

Sweden has been highly critical of the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. In response to the TT story, Left Party leader Lars Ohly asked why Sweden is involved with the CIA at the same time that the CIA is conducting business that all of official Sweden has distanced itself from.

A leading Green Party member of parliament said Swedish air space should not be available to the "Abu Ghraib commando", referring to the Iraqi prison where American soldiers tortured and abused prisoners.

And now it looks like Denmark is also involved:

The Danish ministry of foreign affairs has asked the US government to put a stop to unauthorized flights by the CIA into Danish airspace, Ritzau news bureau reported on Monday.

The government is opposed to unauthorized flights by the CIA through Danish airspace, a position it has expressed to the United States, according to Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has made it quite clear to US officials that Denmark does not want its airspace used for purposes that are in conflict with international conventions," wrote Moeller, in response to an inquiry from Frank Aaen, spokesman for military affairs for the Red-Green Alliance.

Moeller had originally denied that the government had knowledge of transports taking place in Danish airspace that violate " international conventions", according to Ritzau.

Aaen was not satisfied with the ministry's statement, however.

"The government must have found out that there is a problem when Denmark's close ally apparently misuses Danish airspace. Nevertheless, they continue using cautious formulations in the hope that nobody notices anything. It would benefit the government if it clearly rejected these flights instead of producing a half- finished song," said Aaen.

There seems to be two separate issues. One is that some countries were where secret jails and/or interrogation (torture) centers were established. Right now that seems to be most likely Romania and Poland.

The other issue is that CIA planes with prisoners on board landed in a host of allied European countries. Right now this seems to be Spain, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Czech Republic, Sweden and Britain. That the CIA planes landed in those countries is pretty much established. What is being investigated is whether or not prisoners were on board.

Nothing new out of yesterday's State Department briefing on this issue. Just more hot air about how Ereli can't list or describe what the U.S. government has said or which country has requested what. Here's a perfect example:

QUESTION: Adam, when you say that this issue comes up, I mean, if the United States does have agreements with various allies to have these secret prisons, I mean, isn't it implied that it would have come up? So could you please explain a little bit what you mean by that?

MR. ERELI: Oh, well, I think I might have misled you. In all those remarks, I thought we were talking about the issues of -- about planes and landings. The secret prisons issue, two points on the secret -- well, one point on the secret prisons issue and one point only, that that's an issue that I have and we've all sort of refrained from getting into and that I'll continue to refrain from getting into. We don't -- it's not an issue that I'm prepared to discuss because it is -- it deals with purported intelligence matters or activities that are outside my realm of knowledge or responsibility, so I'm not going to talk about secret prisons.

I will tell you with respect to earlier discussions from previous briefings about protests from governments, about flights and uses of airports, that that's the issue that comes up that I was referring to earlier, that that's the issue that's not jeopardizing relationships. And as far as the secret prisons issue goes, just to make things clear, that's an issue that I'm not prepared to speak to. We've been very clear about that from the very beginning of this issue and I don't have anything more to add to it.

But today's Washington Post has a good front-page article:

The CIA has established joint operation centers in more than two dozen countries where U.S. and foreign intelligence officers work side by side to track and capture suspected terrorists and to destroy or penetrate their networks, according to current and former American and foreign intelligence officials.

The Americans and their counterparts at the centers, known as CTICs, make daily decisions on when and how to apprehend suspects, whether to whisk them off to other countries for interrogation and detention, and how to disrupt al Qaeda's logistical and financial support.

The CTICs are entirely separate from the covert prisons, known in classified documents as "black sites," that the CIA has run at various times in eight countries. Legal experts and intelligence officials have said that the prisons -- whose existence was disclosed in a Washington Post report earlier this month -- would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries. The CTICs, by contrast, are an expansion of the hidden intelligence cooperation that has been a staple of foreign policy for decades.

Countering terrorism has overshadowed just about all other foreign policy concerns, including "making friends with the sorts of characters you would not have been in the same room with before," one former foreign intelligence official said.

In short, the CIA has more than doubled its budget to make alliances with "unsavory" organizations inside foreign countries simply for the scope on the "War on Terror". While this article seems to be not directly related to the secret prisons network, it's important to understand that with the cooperation of other intelligence agencies is how the CIA identifies, kidnaps and then transports these people from one country to another. Definitely read the whole thing.

And here is the most shocking article:

The United States has detained more than 80 000 people in facilities from Afghanistan to Cuba since the attacks on the World Trade Centre four years ago, the Pentagon said on Thursday. The disclosure comes at a time of growing unease about Washington's treatment of prisoners in its "war on terror" and Europe's unknowing help in the CIA's practice of rendition.

But it was an even less visible aspect of America's detention policy that was causing a furore in European capitals yesterday: the CIA practice of rendering terror suspects for interrogation to secret prisons in third countries. Washington faced mounting pressure on Thursday to respond to reports of secret landings by private jets used by the CIA to transport terror suspects in at least six countries. "If these allegations turn out to be true, the crucial thing is whether these flights landed in the member states with or without the knowledge and approval of the authorities," Terry Davis, the Council of Europe's secretary general, said.

The council, which has named a Swiss senator, Dick Marty, to investigate the allegations, called for cooperation with the inquiry on Thursday. "This issue goes to the very heart of the Council of Europe's human rights mandate," René van der Linden, the president of the parliamentary assembly, said in a speech to the Council of Europe's executive body.

80,000 people? Even assuming that a huge chunk of that is people arrested in Iraq or Afghanistan, that leaves plenty of margin left over for people "detained" from other countries. And just because someone is arrested in Iraq doesn't mean they stay in Iraq - someone high-level might be rendered to a secret location in another country to be "interrogated".

The United States of America is now truly the world's policeman - and world's jailer. Let's compare this to the number of people in prison worldwide (data from British government PDF):

• Saudi Arabia - 23,720
• Yemen - 14,000
• Iran - 163,526
• Pakistan - 78,938
• Indonesia - 62,886
• Myanmar - 53,195
• Syria - 14,000
• Nigeria - 39,368
• Morocco -32,000
• Libya - 6,750
• Zimbabwe - 21,000

So only Iran has arrested more people than the United States in the above list. And these countries have large populations, Pakistan with 154 million people, Iran with 71 million, Indonesia with 214 million.

The only repressive country with autocratic rule that has a much larger number of people detained is China with about 1.5 million people behind bars.

Are there really 80,000 terrorists out there? Or even 80,000 suspected terrorists? That seems like an astronomical number. And considering that even repressive governments like Myanmar, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (Pakistan!!) have arrested fewer people, either the police states of the world are falling down on the job or else the USA has been gripped with arrest fever.

Of course the numbers of people in prison per country is based on 2004 alone, while the 80,000 refers to how many the USA has "detained" since 9/11. But the numbers of people in jail from Rangoon to Riyadh refer to people convicted of crimes or in pre-trial detention. The number 80,000 comes from people simply "detained" for alleged terrorism activities. Not one of them has been convicted of anything! Not one!

No matter how corrupt the authorities are in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, at least you know some of those people in jail there really did commit a crime. But the people detained by the USA? Not one person has been convicted. Not one. Two Americans (Lindh and Abdul Hamid) pled guilty to lesser charges and went to prison. Zacarias Moussaoui went insane and pled guilty in his trial. So that's three convictions. Three total.

I just don't know what to say. That is simply astounding. 80,000 arrests and not a single conviction on terrorism charges apart from 1 insane guy and two plea bargains.

Wait a minute, now I see the number is actually 83,000 detained. Actually the report says 82,400. And that includes 108 people who have died while in U.S. custody.

I really don't know what else to say, except that the investigation continues...

Peace