Szczytno-Szymany International Airport

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Szczytno-Szymany International Airport Międzynarodowy Port Lotniczy Szczytno-Szymany
IATA: SZY - ICAO: EPSY
Summary
Airport type		Private
Operator		Porty Lotnicze „Mazury – Szczytno” Sp. z o.o.
Serves		Szczytno
Elevation AMSL		463 ft (141 m)
Coordinates		53°28′55″N, 20°56′16″E
Runways
Direction	Length		Surface
Direction	ft	m	Surface
09/20	6,562	2,000	Concrete
Statistics (2005)[1]
Number of Passengers Change from 2004			0 0%
Aircraft Movements Change from 2004			0 0%

Szczytno-Szymany International Airport (IATA: SZY, ICAO: EPSY) is a Polish regional airport located in the village Szymany, some 10 km from the center of the city of Szczytno in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in the North of Poland. It is the only airport in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship. As of 2005 the airport does not have any year-round scheduled service and caters mostly to general aviation, charter flights and seasonally scheduled connections in the summer.

1 Involvment in extraordinary renditions
2 References
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Involvment in extraordinary renditions

The airport gained attention in the press in 2005, when it was alleged to be a so-called black site involved in the CIA's network of extraordinary renditions. Terrorist suspects were to be secretly held, and even tortured, in violation of Polish law, by the CIA. Flight records show that an airplane leased by the CIA flying from Kabul to Guantanamo Bay made a stop in Szymany. Officials from the airport have confirmed that some of these flights bypassed normal customs-clearing procedures, and that during the time of these landings, the airport regularly received visits by cars bearing markings associated with intelligence training school outside the nearby village of Stare Kiejkuty.

As recently as November, 2006, the European Parliament investigative commission led by Claudio Fava had been told, when asked for the flight logs of 11 specific flights observed to have transited through Szymany, that "[the records] have [not] been retained, have been faxed and destroyed, and finally said to have been saved in an unspecified place."^[1] The commission report also quotes Szymany officials as confirming six occasions in 2002 and 2003 when Gulfstream jets bearing civilian registration numbers had landed at the airport, bypassing customs clearance. Airport officials had been directly ordered not to approach the aircraft, and vehicles bearing military registration numbers affiliated with the nearby base at Stare Kiejkuty awaited the arrival of each aircraft.

See: Secret CIA prisons