European authorities scrutinize shadowy journey of American jet

[struggle4progress]

By John Crewdson
Chicago Tribune
(MCT)

... The Gulfstream 4, which bore the U.S. registration number N478GS, rolled onto an area of the runway that was under construction, snapping its left-side landing gear and rupturing a fuel tank inside the left wing. While investigators said the damage was "substantial," none of the plane's passengers was injured.

Ordinarily, it would have been just one of a half-dozen or so non-fatal aircraft mishaps that occur each year in this East European country, where decades of Soviet domination have been replaced by a democratic government that now enjoys excellent relations with the United States.

But the flight's origins in Afghanistan, the Gulfstream's veiled ownership by apparent front companies, the failure to make European investigators aware of the ill-fated flight and the still-undisclosed identities and fates of the seven passengers offer possible clues to the persistent riddle of which friendly foreign countries have allowed the United States to hide suspected terrorists on their soil.

Romanian transport ministry documents show that Gulfstream N478GS arrived in Bucharest on the afternoon of Dec. 6, 2004, from Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base, where the United States operates a well-documented detention facility for enemy combatants ...


http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/world/15504016.htm

[KoKo]

1. What a mysterious article. Passengers dead or alive? Who fixed the

damaged plane. Registered at different times to lawyers in Montana, yet flys out of Fayetteville, NC. People trying to track down passengers and where plane was repaired come up with dead ends.

Another curious story that will go down the memory whole, though.