BERN, 17 December 2005 — Switzerland has opened a criminal investigation into whether suspected CIA flights violated Swiss laws by carrying terror suspects through the country’s airspace, officials said yesterday.
“The investigation is in connection with the alleged CIA overflights,” said Mark Wiedmer, spokesman for the Federal Prosecutor’s Office.
Wiedmer said that the investigation was launched earlier this week, but that prosecutors “were aware of the difficulties” they will probably face in obtaining information from Washington.
Last month, the Swiss Foreign Ministry said it had asked the United States about allegations that clandestine CIA planes carried terror suspects through its airspace, landing four times at Geneva airport.
According to the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation, US-registered planes suspected of being used by the CIA, crossed Swiss airspace on at least 73 occasions since 2001.
One plane, registered to the US Department of Defense, flew across the country twice on Feb. 17, 2003, on a flight from Ramstein, Germany, to Aviano, Italy, and back again to Ramstein.
Italy has issued arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA agents accused of involvement in the alleged 2003 kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr. The Council of Europe, the continent’s main human rights watchdog, is looking into the reports that the CIA set up secret jails in some European nations and transported terror suspects by covert flights.
It has urged governments to fully provide information on the issue.
Dick Marty, a Swiss lawmaker and the lead investigator in the council’s probe, has singled out the Swiss government as doing little to investigate, possibly to avoid a dispute with Washington for political or economic reasons.
More than a half-dozen other investigations are under way into whether European countries may have hosted secret CIA-run prisons, and whether European airports and airspace were used for CIA flights in which prisoners were tortured or transported to countries where torture is practiced.
