A/HRC/13/42* page 52 Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman197 were also detained in the facility in Poland. The Polish press subsequently claimed that the authorities of Poland - during the term of office of President Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Prime Minister Leszek Miller - had assigned a team of “around a dozen” intelligence officers to cooperate with the United States on Polish soil, thereby putting them under exclusive American control and had permitted American “special purpose planes” to land on the territory of Poland.198 The existence of the facility has always been denied by the Government of Poland and press reports have indicated that it is unclear what Polish authorities knew about the facility. 115. While denying that any terrorists had been detained in Poland, Zbigniew Siemiątkowski, the head of the Polish Intelligence Agency in the period 2002-2004, confirmed the landing of CIA flights.199 Earlier, the Marty report had included information from civil aviation records revealing how CIA-operated planes used for detainee transfers landed at Szymany airport, near the town of Szczytno, in Warmia-Mazuria province in north-eastern Poland, and at the Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania between 2003 and 2005. Marty also explained how flights to Poland were disguised by using fake flight plans.200 116. In research conducted for the present study, complex aeronautical data, including “data strings”201 retrieved and analysed, have added further to this picture of flights disguised using fake flight plans and also front companies. For example, a flight from Bangkok to Szymany, Poland, on 5 December 2002 (stopping at Dubai) was identified, though it was disguised under multiple layers of secrecy, including charter and sub-contracting arrangements that would avoid http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05302005_bradbury.pdf. Mr. Ghul was reportedly transferred to Pakistani custody in 2006. 197 Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, opinion No. 29/2006 (United States of America) (A/HRC/4/40/Add.1), para. 15. See also “Two other top Al-Qaeda operatives Nabbed”, Fox news, 4 March 2003, available from www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,80170,00.html. 198 Edyta Żemła, Mariusz Kowalewski, “Polski wywiad w służbie CIA” Rzeczpospolita, 15 April 2009. 199 Adam Krzykowski , Mariusz Kowalewski, ‘Politycy przeczą’ Rzeczpospolita, 15 April 2009. 200 Dick Marty, op. cit. 201 Data strings are exchanges of messages or digital data, mostly in the form of coded text and numbers between different entities around the world on aeronautical telecommunications networks. They record all communications filed in relation to each particular aircraft, as its flights are planned in advance, and as it flies between different international locations. The filings of initial flight plans come from diverse entities, including aviation service providers, Air Navigation Services authorities, airport authorities and Government agencies. Specialist operators of the Integrated Initial Flight Plan Processing System (IFPS) process each message, circulate it to relevant third parties, and reply to the entity that sent it, in the form of an “operational reply”. The messages sent by IFPS operators are also recorded in data strings.