The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has violated Denmark's requests that the United States not use Danish airspace for secret flights, believed to breach international conventions.

The opposition's Red-Green Alliance had already demanded that Minister of Transport Flemming Hansen explain why an aircraft used by the CIA to transport suspected terrorists around the world landed in Copenhagen earlier this year.

Torture allegations

Reports surfaced in May that civil airplanes secretly registered by the CIA had been sighted over Denmark since 2001. Human rights organisations and US media claim that the planes are used to transport terror suspects to places where torture is conducted.

Though Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said earlier that he was confident that the CIA neither breached human rights nor violated Danish airspace, Minister of Foreign Affairs Per Stig Møller informed the parliament in August that Denmark had put a stop to the practice.

'The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has made it quite clear to US officials that Denmark does not want its airspace used for purposes that are in conflict with international conventions,' wrote Møller in August, in response to an earlier inquiry put forward by the Red-Green Alliance.

Møller said the request had referred to the so-called Chicago Convention, which allows US aircraft to fly over Danish territories without special permission as long as they are civilian, and not of a military nature.

Flights continue

Hansen, however, replied to an inquiry by Red-Green Alliance's MP and defence spokesman Frank Aaen that one of the aircraft, registered as N168D, had passed through Danish airspace on 10 October this year, on its way from Iceland to Hungary.

The aircraft is owned by Devon Holding & Leasing, which US newspaper The New York Times has identified as one of seven carriers used by the CIA as fronts to conduct the flights.

Møller has declined to comment on how Denmark has demanded that the CIA flights over the country be stopped, saying that 'the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' contact with American authorities on these questions are conducted through normal diplomatic channels as a part of a confidential dialogue.'

Call for an explanation

Aaen, however, demanded that Møller appear before the parliament's foreign affairs committee and explain the continued flights. He also requested an answer as to why another CIA aircraft landed at Copenhagen's Kastrup Airport in March and stayed there for 23 hours.

'The fact that the USA continues the traffic of CIA aircraft despite the Danish request, partly demonstrates American arrogance towards other countries' sovereignty, and partly that Danish authorities obviously haven't been as outspoken as they should. It's evident here as well as in the many revelations of torture conducted by the USA in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Danish government is much too reluctant to criticise US violations of international conventions,' Aaen said.

Hansen has earlier emphasised that though Danish authorities know of the aircrafts' traffic in their airspace, they do not know who or what is being transported in the planes or what purpose they serve.

Human rights organisations say the CIA uses the flights to kidnap or intern suspected terrorists and transport them to countries known for allowing torture during interrogations. The aircraft have been compared with Air America, the intelligence agency's secret carrier, that transported supplies and troops during the war in Vietnam.

The CIA planes were used in the internment of two Egyptian citizens in Stockholm in December 2001. Another transport began with the kidnapping of Egyptian-born Imam Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in Milan in February 2003, and caused an Italian judge to issue an arrest order against 13 named CIA employees.