Aero Contractors' planes were used for torture, group report says

In 2005, Johnston County was pinpointed by several national news organizations as a site that provided planes used for torture flights.

And now a UNC-CH law professor and several of her students are getting involved.

Deborah Weissman, a law professor at UNC-CH, and eight of her students released a report last week that implicated Aero Contractors, the company highlighted in 2005 for providing charter jets to the CIA, in the movement and torture of suspected terrorists.

Weissman and her students were hired by N.C. Stop Torture Now, a Raleigh-based activist group whose goal is to expose and end the state’s role in the United States’ involvement in torture.

The 67-page report details the involvement of Aero in the process of extraordinary rendition, which is when the CIA seizes potential terrorists and interrogates them, usually involving torture, said Josh McIntyre, a volunteer at Stop Torture Now.

The activist group has met with Gov. Bev Perdue, the attorney general and local figures about the state’s role in supporting torture, McIntyre said.

Perdue’s staff told the group that if it published a report detailing real victims’ experiences and a clear link of state and local involvement, Perdue would be forced to act, McIntyre said.

Weissman, who focuses on human rights, civil rights and domestic abuse law, said she was asked to help explain the connection between private enterprise and the CIA’s program of extraordinary rendition.

One victim of extraordinary rendition on an Aero plane is Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian native who sought political asylum in the United Kingdom in 1994, according to the report.

Mohamed was detained in Pakistan in 2002 by U.S. agents, and flown to Morocco and then Afghanistan, where he was tortured until his release in the U.K. in 2009, despite never being charged with a crime.

Stop Torture Now hopes the report will be a springboard to form a citizen-driven committee on accountability, McIntyre said.

“We would like to have a Board of Directors in place in a month or two and some full time staffers soon after that,” he said.

McIntyre said the committee would hold open interviews with state officials and compile a report.

“The report would include to what extent local leaders knew about the policy, to what extent can they be held accountable and what can be done about the issue in the future,” McIntyre said.

Weissman said she thinks the group can make an impact.

“Stop Torture Now has been asking for an investigation for some years now,” Weissman said. “The efforts will be ongoing and there will be increasing support for a commission.”

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