Ghost Plane The True Story of the CIA Torture Program

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031236024X

Chapter 1 Stockholm, Sweden, Bromma airPort, December 18, 2001, 8:20 p.m.It was a dark and chilly night when the two cars pulled up within two yards of an entrance door to the airport's small security office. The sky was clear, and with a breeze blowing from the southwest, the temperature hovered just above freezing. It was approaching the worst of the near Arctic winter. The sun had set more than five hours ago. Paul Forell, a uniformed officer of the border police with twenty-five years' experience, was already at his post inside and completing some paperwork. It was then a group of plainclothes detectives walked in, officers of the Swedish security police, known as SAPO. They said that the deportation operation was getting under way. Ten minutes later, two Americans dressed in suits walked into Forell's office. Both were about thirty-five years old. They gave their first names and said they were from the U.S. Embassy. They obviously knew the SAPO officers already, he recalled. As they were speaking, and just before 9:00 p.m., an American-registered Gulfstream V jet was touching down on the 5,400-foot runway. Some of the SAPO officers went to meet the U.S. plane, and found onboard a security team of "seven or eight, among them a doctor and two Egyptian officials." In the cars parked outside Forell's police station, dressed in ordinary clothes but in handcuffs, were two other Egyptian citizens, both suspected terrorists under arrest and awaiting deportation. The security team from the plane reached the parked cars and, one at a time, brought the arrested men inside. Everything now went very fast. "I think there were four or five people who were around every suspect, so it was at least twelve or fifteen persons in my little station. The first guy was coming in, they asked, 'What room can I use?' So I just showed them inside there [an inner room] and pointed with my fingers." Forell described the agents as wearing black masks, with small holes that showed their eyes. In the crowded office with Forell were now several SAPO and other plainclothes police officers, two Americans in suits, about eight agents in masks, and an interpreter, too. What happened next would later cause a political crisis in Stockholm. The Americans were operating on Swedish soil, and officially this was simply a Swedish deportation. But Forell watched as his SAPO colleagues allowed the U.S. agents to take the prisoners one by one into the small, separate changing room to carry out what the Americans described as a "security check." According to a later inquiry, this security check included "a body search, their clothes were cut to pieces and placed in bags, their hair was thoroughly examined, as were their oral cavities and ears. In addition they were handcuffed and their ankles fettered. Each was then dressed in an overall and photographed. Finally loose hoods without holes for their eyes were placed over their heads." Meanwhile, Forell stayed behind watching from the public premises. Later, one of the Egyptians reported that he had been given some kind of sedative, which had been administered by suppository. It left him drowsy. Throughout, said Forell, the masked Americans kept very quiet. "They were talking very, very swiftly. And quiet. So I couldn't understand what they were saying. . . . And as I said before, they were acting very professional." Forell thought the whole incident very strange. "My Swedish colleagues, they didn't give me any information [on] what the case was about. The only thing they were telling me was that [these are] two prisoners that are suspected for terrorists, and that's it." He continued: "There was one th