Delivered Into Enemy Hands - Human Rights Watch

The flight plan laid out in the document corresponds to some Eurocontrol flight data on file
with Human Rights Watch. According to that data, a flight plan for a Boeing 737 with tail
number N313P (the same tail number as a plane mentioned in Tripoli Document 2233,
which apparently transported the MI6’s Mark Allen and the CIA’s Steve Kappes to Libya—
see below), operated by Aero Contractors—a North Carolina company widely reported to
have been used by the CIA—filed a flight plan to go from Dulles airport in Washington at
2:51 a.m. on March 7, 2004 and land in Tripoli at 12:01 p.m. local time. The plane then
appears to have flown beyond Eurocontrol’s area of responsibility, because it disappears
temporarily from Eurocontol’s flight records. The plane’s trajectory is not recorded again in
the Eurocontrol records until March 9, 2012, when a flight plan was filed for a departure
from Misrata, Libya on March 9 at 4:47 p.m. local time for Palma Majorca, an island off the
coast of Spain.
Another of the Tripoli Documents provides evidence of the role of the United States and the
United Kingdom in Belhadj’s transfer back to Libya. At the end of a two-page letter from
“Mark in London” (presumably Mark Allen, former head of counterterrorism at MI6 named in
other Tripoli Documents) 292 dated March 18, 2004, to “Musa,” he writes to “congratulate”
Musa Kusa on the “safe arrival of Abu ‘Abd Allah Sadiq,” the name Belhadj used at the
time. 293 The letter continues, “[t]his was the least we could do for you and for Libya to
demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over the years.” Then, corroborating
US involvement, he writes, “Amusingly, we got a request from the Americans to channel
292 The “Mark” who signed the letter is believed to be Mark Allen, former head of counterterrorism at MI6, because he is
named in a number of other Tripoli Documents where other “CIA” and “MI6” issues are discussed. For example, Document
2226, dated June 19, 2003, signed by “Mark” and “Steve” to Musa Kusa, discusses an upcoming “joint CIA and SIS”
“technical visit” by a “team of experts” to Libya to examine Libya’s “WMD” (Weapons of Mass Destruction) program. Another
letter depicted in Document 2233 is about either the technical visit referenced in Document 2226 or a different one. It says
that “Mark Allen” and “Steve Kappes” will be arriving in Libya for a “joint US/UK technical visit” on a Boing 737 Business Jet
with tail number N313P. A Boeing 737 with registration number N313P has been linked to a large number of CIA rendition
flights. See Human Rights Watch, Double Jeopardy: CIA Renditions to Jordan, April 2008,
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/jordan0408_1.pdf, p. 24-25; See also “Human Cargo: Binyam Mohamed and
the Rendition Frequent Flier Programme,” Reprieve, June 10, 2008, http://www.reprieve.org.uk/publications/humancargo/
(accessed July 25, 2012), p. 16, n. 35. A “Mark Allen” was MI6’s director of counterterrorism at the time these letters were
written and Steve Kappes is a former deputy director of the CIA. See Richard Norton-Taylor, “Sir Mark Allen: the secret link
between MI6, the CIA and Gaddafi,” The Guardian, September 4, 2011,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/04/mark-allen-mi6-libya-profile (accessed July 25, 2012); Jeff Stein, “Inside
Man,” Washingtonian, March 25, 2010, http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/inside- (accessed July 25, 2012);
and George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), p. ix, where
Steve Kappes is identified as senior officer in the clandestine service, and p. 289-97, where Kappes’ trips to Libya with a
senior British officer to evaluate Libya’s weapons WMD program is discussed in detail.
293 Tripoli Documents 2266 and 2267, a fax from MI6 to Libyan intelligence service.
97 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | SEPTEMBER 2012