LONDON, April 5, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has used private aircraft firms and front companies secretly to transfer terror suspects in violation of international law, Amnesty International charged Wednesday, April 5.

In a summary of "Below the radar: Secret flights to torture and 'disappearance,'" the humanitarian organization accuses the CIA of using the practice of "rendition," or illegally transferring people from one country to another to bypass judicial and administrative oversight, according to CNN International Online.

In the new report, the London-based rights group described "how the CIA has used private aircraft operators and front companies to preserve the secrecy of 'rendition' flights," reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Amnesty said it "has records of nearly 1,000 flights" by planes that appear to have been "permanently operated by the CIA through front companies" and most of which used European airspace.

It also said "there are records of some 600 other flights made by planes confirmed as having been used at least temporarily by the CIA."

Reports of clandestine CIA interrogation centers and transport flights for terror suspects emerged in November, along with suggestions of on-board torture sessions.

The European Union has threatened sanctions against any of its member states found to have been operating such secret prisons, or allowing their territory to be used for the transport of the phantom detainees.

The report "exposes a covert operation whereby people have been arrested or abducted, transferred and held in secret or handed over to countries where they have faced torture and other ill-treatment."

"One particular aircraft is known to have made over 100 stops in Guantanamo Bay," it said.

"Another took (terror suspect) Abu Omar to Egypt from Germany after he was kidnapped in Italy."

With Amnesty warning that governments may find themselves "complicit in serious human rights abuses," it urged them to take steps to stop and prevent renditions.

Governments must insist that any aircraft used for an intelligence mission be declared a "state" flight and prohibit the use of airspace and airports for "renditions" and actively investigate suspected "rendition" cases, it said.

It also urged them to disclose "the full extent of these practices and the fate of those whose whereabouts are still unknown."

"The US administration has tried to circumvent the ban on torture and other ill-treatment in many ways. The latest evidence shows how the administration is manipulating commercial arrangements in order to be able to transfer people in violation of international law," said Irene Khan, secretary-general of Amnesty International, according to CNN.

"It demonstrates the length to which the US government will go to conceal these abductions," she added.

According to AFP, Khan further charged that the whole process surrounding the renditions has often been illegal right from the start.

"The report shows not just how arrest and extradition procedures have been ignored, the ban on torture and other ill-treatment has been disregarded, but also how aviation practices have been undermined," Khan said.

Amnesty said the aviation sector must also take steps to prevent renditions.

"The onus is on (aviation) companies to ensure that they are aware of the end use of any aircraft they lease or operate and that they do not facilitate human rights violations," Amnesty said.

Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, has revealed that former US President Bill Clinton was the first to use the CIA's rendition program to capture, transfer and question terror suspects on foreign soil.