Meanwhile more questions are being raised about a US practice of secretly detaining wanted men around the world and then flying them to other countries to be interrogated and jailed.

Just weeks after the press revealed that the U.S. government was secretly leasing a Gulfstream jet from a little known Massachusetts company for such a purpose, the company has sold the plane. The Boston Globe reports Premier Executive Transport Services sold the jet to an Oregon company called Bayard Foreign Marketing two days after an article about the jet appeared in the Sunday Times of London. Almost nothing is known about either company.

The Sunday Times reported the CIA and other government agencies leased the plane and used it over 300 times to pick up detainees around the world and then secretly deliver them to countries inclyding Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan that have poor human rights records and practice torture in their jails.

The plane first gained attention in Sweden. In December 2001 the US government requested Swedish officials detain two Egyptian born men. After the men were detained, the men were secretly flown aboard the Gulfstream to Egypt where they claimed they were drugged by US agents and tortured with electric shocks.

There has been speculation that the plane was sold from one government front company to another. The CIA has a long history of secretly owning airlines. Starting in the 1950s the agency began building up a large network of airlines that eventually included about 200 planes and nearly 20,000 employees, making the agency one of the world’s largest airline operators at the time. Among the CIA operated airlines were Air America, Air Asia and Intermountain Aviation.