Boeing Unit Sued Over CIA Flights
ACLU: Firm Flew Terrorist Suspects
ACLU attorney Ben Wizner says Jeppesen should have known the purpose of flights made for the CIA.
(Linda Davidson - Linda Davidson)
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Thursday, May 31, 2007
NEW YORK, May 30 -- The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday that it is suing Jeppesen Dataplan, claiming the subsidiary of Boeing secretly flew three of the CIA's terrorism suspects overseas, where they were tortured.
The cases involve allegations of mistreatment of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen, in July 2002 and January 2004; Elkassim Britel, an Italian citizen, in May 2002; and Ahmed Agiza, an Egyptian citizen, in December 2001.
Mohamed is being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Britel in Morocco; and Agiza in Egypt, the ACLU said in a statement.
Mike Pound, a spokesman for Jeppesen of Englewood, Colo., said company officials had not seen the lawsuit and had no immediate comment. Jeppesen, a subsidiary of Boeing Commercial Aviation Services, provides support services, rather than the flights themselves, he said.
"We don't know the purpose of the trip for which we do a flight plan," Pound said. "We don't need to know specific details. It's the customer's business, and we do the business that we are contracted for. It's not our practice to ever inquire about the purpose of a trip."
ACLU attorney Ben Wizner said Jeppesen could not have been ignorant of the purpose of CIA flights. "Either they knew or reasonably should have known that they were facilitating a torture program," he said.
Companies "are not allowed to have their head in the sand and take money from the CIA to fly people, hooded and shackled, to foreign countries to be tortured," Wizner said.
Boeing of Chicago is not named in the lawsuit. Boeing spokesman Tim Neale said company officials typically do not comment on lawsuits and had not seen this suit. Nor did he confirm the allegations that Jeppesen provided services to the CIA. "Jeppesen has a confidentiality clause with all its customers," he said.
The lawsuit, which the ACLU said it would file Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, charges that Jeppesen knowingly provided direct flight services to the CIA that enabled the clandestine transportation of the men to secret overseas locations. The ACLU claims the men were tortured there and subjected to other "forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" under the agency's "extraordinary rendition" program.
