TUCKED AWAY at the end of a pot-holed country lane that runs through a dense forest, Szymany airport would be the perfect setting for a John Le Carre novel. A shabby control tower looks out over a long runway which appears slightly out of place next to a modest terminal building. Until last year, when it was mothballed in a row over funding, the former Warsaw Pact military airbase enjoyed a brief renaissance as a regional airport for tourists visiting the picturesque Warminsko Mazurskie area of north-eastern Poland. German tourists on hunting trips, or sailors holidaying on the nearby lakes, were the typical passengers who flew into Szymany on small propeller planes.

But the tranquillity of the airport, which is now disturbed by no more than the sound of migratory birds heading for the lakes, belies its place at the centre of an international row about Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "rendition flights" of terror suspects. Human rights activists and MEPs (members of the European Parliament) investigating the flights have long suspected that many detainees passed through Szymany airport on their way to a secret United States detention centre at the nearby Stare Kiejkuty military base.

These suspicions were recently hardened when the airport's former director confirmed that numerous alleged CIA flights touched down at Szymany, where they were met by military vehicles from Stare Kiejkuty. The evidence from Mariola Przewlocka, who was sacked from her job last year for "political reasons," prompted MEPs to make the first official claim that terror suspects may have been detained on EU soil.

Curiosity aroused

An unassuming and soft-spoken woman, now earning her living as a mortgage consultant in her home town of Szczytno, close to the airport, Ms. Przewlocka said she became curious soon after taking over as the airport's director in 2003. Her rural idyll, which was usually disturbed by no more than the buzz of propeller planes, was interrupted by the roar of much larger engines when a series of Gulfstream jets tore down the runway at odd times of the day and night in 2003.

She assumed they were carrying intelligence people, but her curiosity grew into suspicion on a late summer evening in 2003 when the friendly buzz of propeller planes was replaced by the deafening sound of large jet engines as a Boeing 737 landed at Szymany.

The 737, which stayed for just 57 minutes after landing at 9 p.m. on September 22, 2003, had an unusual flight plan. It arrived from Kabul and then took off for Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, site of the U.S.' notorious detention centre, via Warsaw, where it refuelled.

This left Ms. Przewlocka wondering why the plane could not simply have flown from Kabul to Warsaw, which is just over 100 miles away from Szymany. "If it was carrying regular passengers there would have been no reason to land in Szymany. It should not have landed at Szymany — we did not have the proper safety procedures for such a large aircraft. I should not have accepted the flight but I had no choice."

Struggling to observe the 737 in the dark from the control tower as it embarked on the standard drill for what were known simply as "international flights," Ms. Przewlocka started asking herself questions which were answered only when news broke last year of the CIA flights. "As with the other `international planes,' the 737 waited at the end of the runway and did not taxi the one km to the terminal building," she said.

Ms. Przewlocka, who was under instructions not to approach the aircraft, added: "Two military vans went out to meet the 737, but it was impossible to see what happened because the planes always parked in a way that blocked our view." It was impossible to see who drove the military vehicles, which headed off in the direction of the military base at Stare Kiejkuty, or which passengers they carried, because they had tinted windows. But procedures for the "international flights" were enough to rouse suspicions.

"Before the planes arrived, high-ranking border guards would arrive from Warsaw. The regular guards would not be there. I would be told not to arrange any customs facilities," she said.

"I was issued with firm instructions never to refuse landing rights to an aircraft. On one occasion, when the runway was covered in snow, I was told that heads would roll if we did not accept the plane. A man, who paid the landing fee, also paid for the runway to be de-iced.

"It was not always the same man making the payments but it was always a Pole dressed in civilian clothes. They would pay between four and six times the normal landing fee for civil aircraft — between 8,000 and 12,000 zlotych [£1,538-£2,307]. They would say they needed a special service so they would make a special payment. On one occasion an American lady — I was told she was from the embassy — came with the man who made the payments. She was standing in front of the airport office when the military vehicles left. She turned her back on the vehicles. It seemed as if she did not want to be a witness."

Minimum staff

On the night the 737 arrived the authorities asked for a minimal number of staff in the control tower. "I think they wanted as few witnesses as possible." Had more witnesses been around they would have seen the military vans, with darkened windows, head to the Stare Kiejkuty military training centre about 12 miles north of the airport, according to Ms. Przewlocka.

Jaroslaw Jurczenko, chairman of the airport board, who was its director when the first Gulfstream jet landed in December 2002, is in no doubt about the base's link to the nine "international" flights which passed through Szymany. "We were informed that people from the `unit' would meet the flights," he said. Laughing, Mr. Jurczenko added: "They did not say which unit. But there is only one unit nearby — at Stare Kiejkuty."

The Polish authorities are far less forthcoming than the airport staff, whose testimony is seen as some of the most significant since allegations about the CIA flights were first published in The Guardian last year. MEPs now allege that 11 "CIA-operated" planes landed in Poland from, or bound for, countries "linked with extraordinary rendition circuits and the transfer of detainees."

Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, head of Poland's military intelligence agency at the time of the flights, is adamant there were no secret prisons in Poland, but admitted cooperating with the U.S. "I have confirmed myself that CIA planes landed in Poland ... In 2003 this cooperation was very intense. People were moved around, equipment was moved around. This required a lot of flights." —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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