Red Sox Jet Involved In Torture Transports?

Jet's travels cloaked in mystery
Red Sox partner's plane hits spots U.S. sent terror suspects
By John Crewdson and Tom Hundley
Chicago Tribune correspondents
March 20, 2005

Last June, the Boston Red Sox chartered an executive jet to help their manager make a quick visit home in the midst of the team's championship season.

But what was the very same Gulfstream -- owned by one of the Red Sox's partners, but presumably without the team's logo on its fuselage -- doing in Cairo on Feb. 18, 2003?

Perhaps by coincidence, Feb. 18, 2003, was the day an Islamic preacher known as Abu Omar, who had been abducted in Italy the previous day and forced aboard a small plane, also arrived at the Cairo airport. Omar, whose given name is Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan, was imprisoned by the Egyptians and, he claims, brutally tortured. ...

Federal Aviation Administration records obtained by the Tribune show that Gulfstream N85VM has been many places around the world that the Red Sox have almost certainly never gone.

Between June 2002 and January of this year, the Gulfstream made 51 visits to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, site of the U.S. naval base where more than 500 terrorism suspects are behind bars.

During the same period, the plane recorded 82 visits to Washington's Dulles International Airport as well as landings at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., outside the capital and the U.S. air bases at Ramstein and Rhein-Main in Germany.

The plane's flight log also shows visits to Afghanistan, Morocco, Dubai, Jordan, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, Azerbaijan and the Czech Republic. Egypt, Afghanistan, Jordan and Morocco are among the countries to which the U.S. is known to have "rendered" terrorism suspects.

Also: Boston Globe

Here is the FAA's info on the Gulfstream, now using tail number N227SV.

According to the Tribune, the Gulfstream is owned by Assembly Point Aviation, a "religious organization" with an address in Albany, NY, but no telephone number. Its sole officer and director is Phillip H. Morse, who is also a Vice Chairman of the Red Sox.