Poland denies link to alleged CIA bases

At midnight on an autumn night two years ago, a Boeing passenger plane with seven people carrying US passports touched down at a little-used airport deep in the pine forests of north-eastern Poland, officials say.

Confirmation of the mysterious arrival comes after a human rights group said evidence pointed to Szczytno-Szymany airport as a CIA transfer site for al-Qaida prisoners.

Airport officials and border guards said the plane landed at the former military base on September 22, 2003 – the date Human Rights Watch said a Boeing 737 that was part of the prisoner transfer scheme was at the airport.

But authorities – including the airport’s former director – denied any knowledge of prisoner transfers.

New York-based Human Rights Watch says the US government may have used Sczytno-Szymany airport for secret transfers of terror suspects captured in Afghanistan, citing flight logs and unnamed sources.

Polish government officials dismiss the report, and US officials have refused to confirm or deny the claims.

Border guards spokesman Maj Roman Krzeminski said records show that on September 22, 2003 a plane landed at the airport carrying seven people with US passports, and took on board five other people with US passports who were waiting at the airport and whose documents said they came to Poland on business.

He said the plane spent about an hour at the airport before taking off.

Former airport director Mariola Przewloczka described the plane as a Boeing and said border guards drove out to meet the plane on the runway instead of having the occupants enter the airport terminal.

“After the plane landed two vans drove out to meet it with border control officials,” said Przewloczka. “The whole thing lasted a little over a half an hour.”

But she and other officials said they didn’t know where the plane came from or where it went.

Human Rights Watch said yesterday it has evidence indicating the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania.

The conclusion is based on an analysis of flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004 obtained by the group, said Mark Garlasco, a senior military analyst with the organisation.

In Romania, aviation officials and the military denied the rights group’s allegations that the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base may have been used by the CIA as a detention facility.

The Kogalniceanu base, near the Black Sea port city of Constanta, was used by the United States to transit troops and equipment during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The US military evacuated its remaining forces in June 2003.

“When the Americans were here there were so many civilians working there, people would have found out about it,” said Dan Buciuman, the base commander.

Garlasco said one of the flights was a Boeing 737 that in September 2003 flew from Washington to Kabul, Afghanistan, via Ruzyne in the Czech Republic and Tashkent, Uzbekistan, he said.

On September 22, the plane flew to Szczytno-Szymany Airport, continuing to Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base and Sale, Morocco, and finally landed at the US Naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, Garlasco said.

The Szczytno-Szymany Airport is in extensive forests outside the town of Sczytno near Poland’s Masurian Lakes in north-eastern Poland. It’s not an operating airport, but planes can land if prior arrangement is made; only one small single-engine plane was parked there Friday, and there were no take-offs or landings.