For four years, N313P, a modified Boeing 737 bizjet, flew people who’d been kidnapped by the CIA to secret torture-camps; it’s only got 5,942 hours on it, and sports a customized seven-tank fuel reserve for long-haul flights. It’s yours for a mere $27.5M.
Among the people transported on N313P are Fatima Bouchar and her husband, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, Libyan dissidents kidnapped by Americans and sent to Qaddafi’s torture rooms (Bouchar was pregnant when she was kidnapped, and flew “bound to a stretcher and wrapped head-to-foot in tape” while her husband was “shackled in a painful stress position for the flight’s duration”).
The jet was next owned by MGM Mirage Resorts. Now it’s on the block and the broker wants you to know that the plane “doesn’t have a heart and soul. It’s just a really beautiful piece of equipment.”
In 2004, the aircraft carried the “shackled and hooded” Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian who was held in Guantanamo from 2004 until 2009. A few days later, the jet is also believed to have transported Khaled al-Masri, a Lebanese-born German citizen who was held in an American-run prison in Afghanistan for five months. Al-Masri, who claims he was shackled, drugged, and beaten in captivity, was released after his captors told him they’d gotten the wrong man.That same year, as reported by the Guardian, Fatima Bouchar and her husband, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, were abducted by three Americans in Bangkok, Thailand, forced aboard the aircraft. The couple had fought against Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi during the 1980s and 1990s, and according to a Human Rights Watch investigation, their rendition back to Libya had been brokered in a deal between the CIA, British intelligence, and the Qaddafi regime for “mutual benefit.” During the 17-hour journey to Tripoli, Bouchar, who was four months pregnant, was bound to a stretcher and wrapped head-to-foot in tape. Belhaj was shackled in a painful stress position for the flight’s duration. Bouchar spent four months in detention in Libya. Belhaj remained in prison there until 2010.
Want to Buy an Old CIA Rendition Jet?
[Matt Tinoco/Mother Jones]
(via Naked Capitalism)