Flight plans of CIA 'ghost plane' to go public

LONDON - Confidential documents showing flight plans of a CIA "ghost plane" allegedly used to transfer a British resident to secret interrogation sites around the world are to be made public.

The move comes after a Sussex-based company accused of involvement in extraordinary rendition dropped its opposition to a case against it being heard in court.

Lawyers bringing the case against Jeppesen UK, on behalf of the former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, claimed the climbdown had wide-ranging legal implications that could help expose which countries and governments knew the CIA was using their air bases to spirit terrorist suspects around the world.

Jeppesen UK, a division of the Jeppesen Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Boeing, is alleged to have provided a range of services that allowed planes owned by shell companies operating on behalf of the CIA to fly suspected terrorists to "black sites".

"Jeppesen's embarrassing u-turn vindicates our fight to expose corporate collusion in torture," said Clive Stafford Smith, director of the legal charity Reprieve.

According to an affidavit signed by a former employee, Jeppesen's managing director, Bob Overby, told his staff that "we do all the extraordinary rendition flights" and said the CIA "spared no expense" when it came to paying for Jeppesen's services.

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