So it seems the dreaded CIA interrogation camps the earlier news articles wrote about are/were not in Hungary (speculation seems to point toward Poland or Romania). Great, let’s hope that Hungary is really out of this mess.

But here is another mystery for you. Pocakos is writing about the plane N168D. You can read about this plane referred to as CIA charter flight in the New Your Times. [Henrik’s note: According to news that plane is proven to have landed at Budapest airport at least twice in the last years. Also you can find evidence of landing at Planepictures.net]
Pocakos goes further and found the public registration data of the plane in a Federal Aviation Administration Registry. An article from Denmark is also linked, where the “opposition party demands an explanation from the transport minister as to why an aircraft used by the CIA to transport suspected terrorists around the world landed in Copenhagen”.
He also found pieces about similar CIA plane stories, some are referred to as Guantanamo Bay Express and it also has its own Wikipedia entry.

The strange thing is – as Pocakos also point this out- that a leading Hungarian daily newspaper (Népszabadság) on the 3rd of November wrote that there is no plane with such registartion number as N168D, but one day later that actually there is (without referring to the previous day mess up).
Pocakos writes: “Admitting the fact of landing would not mean that there would be terrorist internment camps in Hungary. But the denial of the existence of this plane makes this “harmless” incident rather shady.”

(The referenced blog is in Hungarian)

Tags:
CIA
N168D

Two posts in English from a blog called Northern Irish Magyar [Henrik’s note Magyar=Hungarian in Hungarian].

The first story is titled “The real tragedy of 1956” and captures a rarely empathized perspective of the 1956 revolution.
Paul writes: “The greatest tragedy of 1956 is that Hungary lost a complete generation of its brightest and most spirited young people when a quarter of a million escaped after the Uprising to countries such as US, Britain, Sweden, Austria and West Germany. It’s maybe a harsh thing to say, but the country is still suffering from the fact that the youngsters who were left behind tended to be either the apolitical mediocre or Communist lackeys.”

The second is about BBC’s action to turn off some of its foreign language editions. Unfortunately the Hungarian edition is among these. Paul commets:
“When we went travelling, my shortwave radio followed. We used to pretend to bewildered backpackers, that the goobledy gook spouting out from the radio was actually Uzbek, that we were political dissidents on the run and no, we wouldn’t mind if they bought us poor refugees a beer. In Israel, the better half was delighted to meet an old Hungarian shopkeeper, who not surprisingly had decided to leave his mother country immediately after the Second World War. The next day they were sitting together, listening to a folk music performance from Erdely. I’m a pretty cynical sod, but even I was moved to see his tearful reaction.”

(The referenced blog is in English)

Tags:
BBC
1956