It Could Happen Here - Rendition By Private Jet
Episode Date: May 28, 2025James talks to Gillian Brockell about how she identified the Gulfstream jet that carried migrants to Djibouti and the attempt to stop the flight in Ireland. https://hardghistory.ghost.io/a-priva...te-jet-to-hell/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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AT&T, connecting changes everything.
Coolzone Media.
Hi everyone and welcome to It Could Happen Here.
It's me, James, today here to bring you more terrible news about migration and
deportation. And I'm joined to share that terrible news by Gillian Bruckel, a journalist who has been
tracking deportation flights to Djibouti. Hi, Gillian.
Hi, how are you, James?
I'm good. Well, amidst the crumbling of everything, it's wonderful.
Yeah. I mean, this is terrible news, but I'm also very excited to be in the Cool Zone universe.
I love all of the shows.
Yeah, welcome.
Welcome to the Cool Zone universe.
This is Sophie Lichterman comic universe.
Oh my God.
Such a fangirl.
Okay.
The United States government attempted to deport 12 men, not of whom are Libyan,
to Libya on the 7th of May, right?
It got so far as to take them to the airport, right?
In San Antonio.
In San Antonio, Texas.
And then thanks to a injunction, a court injunction, those people were not taken to Libya.
Those people were instead returned to Libya. Those people were
instead returned to a detention center where, as listeners to the show will now be aware,
they were informed that they were being deported, renditioned, have you want to say it, to South
Sudan.
This news broke a couple of days ago now, I think Tuesday.
Tuesday afternoon Tuesday afternoon.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that was when you were able to begin using your like, ocean aviation knowledge, looking
for like this, this flight, right?
That was taken out to South Sudan, because at the time, yeah, the United States government
was claiming that the flight was a was classified or like a state secret.
And even in court, the judge wasn't aware of the flight was in the air on the ground.
Could it turn around?
The judge in the entity was going to ask it to turn around.
So I wonder if you could like walk listeners through the timeline of this deportation and
then how you were able to find out of, maybe not millions, thousands of planes in the sky, the one that was taking these people to, as it turned out, to Djibouti.
Sure. Yeah. So I've been a journalist for 15 years, but before that, I was a flight attendant. And, you know, I'm an av geek, an aviation enthusiast, the short hand, you know, the hashtag for that is avgeek.
And so, you know, I'm always looking at Flight Radar 24. It's an app where you can track different
aircraft. And so when I heard that the flight might still be in the air, I just thought,
I wonder if I can find it. So I went first, I went on to Flight Radar 24 radar 24 and first I looked at all of the departures out
of San Antonio for like the previous 24 hours since the previous flight that was supposed
to go to Libya that was stopped that departed from San Antonio.
And so I was looking there and you know, didn't see anything just commercial flights, very
obviously military flights. And I know they've used military aircraft sometimes, but commercial flights, very obviously, military flights.
And I know they've used military aircraft sometimes, but I said, I'm not going to try
and touch that right now.
I want to see if it's one of these charter companies, you know, Global X, Avelo, that
have been doing these deportation flights.
Can you explain those to people?
Because I don't think everyone's aware of those.
So these are, you know, commercial carriers, but they're, they're contracting with
DHS to deport people on their aircraft. So, you know, the A320 that you take across the country
is sometimes used to deport people to other countries. And the main companies that are doing that right now are Avelo, GlobalX, I
think Omni does some of them sometimes. And I should say there are a lot of people, especially
on Blue Sky, a lot of Avgeeks, who are tracking and cataloging all of these flights. I wasn't
even aware of that community until I started looking for
so I
Didn't see anything, you know in San Antonio and then I realized oh these people had been transferred to Port
Isabel in the last few weeks, so they would have departed out of Harlingen Airport, okay, which is nearby
It's you know a deep deep, South Texas. Texas. And so I looked at departures out of
Harlingen. It's a small airport. They have like 10 departures a day and it's generally
puddle jumpers from one small Texas town to another small Texas town, you know. And there
was one Global X flight to Miami the day before. The timeline wasn't exactly right, but I know that DHS, you know, has
been slow to notify attorneys.
Yeah.
So I thought, well, maybe this is the flight and they just didn't tell the attorneys until
the next day. So then I spent way too much time looking at all of the departures out
of Miami to see if there were any global X flights. I saw a few things, but you know,
nothing heading across the Atlantic. And so at that point, flight radar 24 will show you
publicly available information on flights. It won't show you all flights, but there is
another, you know, for, for like deep, deep av geeks, there's another website called
ADSB Exchange.
And this is a pool of all feeder data all over the world of all aircraft in the air
that aviation enthusiasts maintain themselves.
And they will have military flights that aren't going to be on flight radar 24.
They also have a lot more information about planes that have a LAD designation, which
stands for limited aviation data displayed.
I don't know how much you want me to explain about that.
Yeah, explain, explain that because I think it's interesting for people.
Sure.
So a LAD designation is used most often for like private jet owners like celebrities and okay
you know the ultra rich and basically it means that they have an extra layer of
privacy for their movements in their private jets, so if you try and find a
specific private jet on flight radar 24, it won't come up.
You know, so like the tail of this plane that did the Djibouti flight is N5AA-88AT.
If you search for that in flight radar 24, you won't see it.
Nothing will come up.
However, if you know what you're looking for,
if you know like, oh, I think the flight is heading to Djibouti right now, you can see
on flight radar 24 that there's a Gulfstream 5 headed to Djibouti right now, but the registration
information is obscured. Okay. You know, it's not like that on the ADS-B. You can see it?
Yeah. Your filters have a lot more power, basically. Okay. You know, it's not like that on the ADS-B. You can... You can see it?
Yeah, your filters have a lot more power, basically.
Okay.
You know, your search terms.
They're going to go around different designations.
And so some people hate that.
You know, Taylor Swift had beef with some guy a couple of years ago because she has
a lead designation on her private jet.
He was using ADS-B Exchange to post her flights, you know,
ostensibly for to shame her for her carbon footprint. But then she like threatened to
sue him and she was like, I have stalkers. Like I don't want them to know when I'm landing
in Nashville, you know, not going to get into that. But you know, that's basically the lad
designation and ADS-B doesn't care.
And so I went on ADS-B and I said, well, since I've already seen all the publicly available
flights, let me just look at LAD flights.
And so I set that filter and that took it down to a couple hundred planes in the air.
And I honestly just got lucky.
I just started clicking on planes because I don't know how to search for all departures out of one airport on ADSB Exchange.
I'm sure Avgeeks who are better at it do.
But I just started clicking on planes.
And I clicked, I think like the third plane that I clicked on, had taken off out of Harlingen
a couple hours earlier and was over the middle of the Atlantic.
Which is not a usual departure for Harlingen.
Right.
Yeah.
It's quite unusual.
And so, you know, I posted on Blue Sky to the other Avgeeks who were looking for it.
I think this might be it.
You know, it's a private jet with a LAD designation that took off from
this very obscure airport and is traveling internationally. Nothing else really fit the
profile. Right. So we all started looking at it. Yeah. Another reporter named Jacqueline
Sweet. You know, I looked up the registration. It's registered to a man named Igor Smirnov, which there are a lot of Igor Smirnovs.
Yeah.
It's a pretty common name.
He's not the chess guy.
He's not the Moldovan guy.
He appears to have once owned an airline in Uzbekistan and has been in the US for some
time.
So he has this private jet.
And then Jaglyn Sweet looked up that, yes, he has DHS contracts.
Okay.
Then the other thing was, I just Googled the tail number, N58880.
One of the first things that came up was that this was the private jet that carried Brittany
Greiner home from Russia when she had been released in a prisoner's
plot.
Yeah.
And so that, you know, was the thing where I was like, okay, this plane's been used for
like weird government business before.
Yeah.
Like, I think this might be it.
Yeah.
So that's when I posted, once I realized the Britney Griner
thing, then I posted it and other people, other Avgeeks were saying, yeah, I think that
might be it. And then, you know, Jacqueline got more info on the contracts. And so this
is for about two hours, we watched it and JJ in DC said, I think it's about to land in Shannon and
you know soon enough it descended and landed at Shannon.
Yep.
Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian,
creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.
To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024.
VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships.
It's more than personal.
It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be.
These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,
to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships.
I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing
other parts of that relationship that are being naked together.
How we love our family.
I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high.
And how we love ourselves.
Singleness is not a waiting room.
You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.
Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of
something much bigger than themselves.
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heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast.
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AT&T, connecting changes everything. So Shannon Airport in Ireland is a frequent refueling stop for the US military.
And you know, that's something that a lot of Irish people really fucking hate.
Yeah, not a US base to be clear.
People are unaware.
Yeah, it's not a US base.
This is US military that are just refueling, but they're refueling to do a lot of things
that the Irish are not okay with.
And so there's an organization there called Shannon Watch, who they're watching all these
US activities and pressuring the government to stop this.
So you know, I tried to email them before the plane even landed.
And I don't know if it was user error on my end or, you know, if I don't know why it didn't
work, but they didn't get the message.
I only found that out like half an hour ago.
Yeah. But so I messaged them and then I like messaged a couple friends in Ireland like, hey, wake
up, wake up.
You know, call somebody, you know, but it was 2 30 in the morning.
I'm glad my friends were asleep.
And yeah, so I don't know how, how much I wanted to get into my personal hedging or my journey, but
I used to be like a neutral objective journalist at the Washington Post for 10 years and I left a
year and a half ago and I've been enjoying being an opinionated journalist. I've been writing a book, but you know, there's a difference
between being an opinionated journalist and actually interfering in a story.
Yeah.
And so I kind of hedged for a minute of like, should I, should I do anything else? Should
I actively participate in trying to stop this flight? You know, am I not going to get a
columnist job someday if I do that?
Yeah.
You know, I'm ashamed to say that, but I have to tell the truth. That's what I thought.
And then I just decided, you know, screw it. I have to do the right thing.
So I called the Shannon Airport police. I called the Shannon Guarda, they call the police the Garda in Ireland.
And I talked to, you know, whatever man answered for like a minute.
And then he was like, let me, let me, you know, knock you up the chain.
And I was forwarded to someone else, to a woman who, you know, she sounded smart, urgent, interested. It sounded like she was
taking notes. It sounded like she was taking this seriously. And I was saying, there is
a plane with this tail number that landed 15 minutes ago that may have people on board who have been illegally removed from the United States, who have not
consented to go to their destination, who are being sent to South Sudan when they are
not from South Sudan.
You know, and I made clear that like, I don't know that this is the right plane, but I'm pretty sure that it is.
This plane has been used before for US government business.
And I said, I know that our judges orders don't matter in your sovereign country, but
a judge has said this is not allowed and it might be happening. And I don't know what your human trafficking
laws are like, but you should know that if there are human trafficking or kidnapping laws
in Ireland that might apply to this, like maybe check the plane.
Yeah.
And, you know, I didn't record the call and I didn't take notes, but I do recall her saying
that she was trying to send someone to check the plane and she was, you know, taking detailed notes.
What are their nationalities? How many are there? Yeah. You know, and, yes, so, you know,
the call lasted 13 minutes and then I waited, you know, was talking with
the other Avgeeks on Blue Sky who were at this point, you know, this is around 10 PM.
It's getting a little late.
And then, yeah, I don't know what happened.
But the plane taxied to a parking stamp near the terminal for a while.
And I thought, Oh, it's been, it's been turned off. It's parked for the night.
I don't think they're going to let them leave.
And then the plane took off.
Uh, it was two hours after it landed.
Um, yeah.
Yeah.
And, uh, it went to Djibouti where it, where it remains at a time of recording. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, it went to Djibouti where it, where it remains at the time of recording.
Yeah.
It's been raised since you first kind of identified this plane.
It's been raised.
I talked to Dallas, like an Irish member of parliament raised it today.
I saw those exchange about it.
I spoke to Paul Murphy, who's the TD for Dublin Southwest. Paul gave me a
statement. I'm just going to read here. The very least the Irish government must do is to inform
the US authorities that no more deportation flights are permitted to use our airspace and
our airports. We must not facilitate this inhumane and illegal deportation policy.
So it does seem like even if nothing was done in this instance, hopefully this isn't
something that will be able to happen again.
I know, as you said, people have been upset about that use of Shannon.
I think they used Nock Airport as well, like for a long time, because the U.S.
used them a lot in its war on terror.
An island has been a neutral country for a long time and there's a feeling that
it compromises
out among some people. But this raises a really interesting question for those of us who are
following the deportations rate, which is like, we've been thinking that it was happening
on military or commercial flights, like you said, but there's this possibility that these
smaller planes are being used for deportation. And like, that's very concerning.
It means we could have missed things.
Absolutely.
It also shows the timeline here is extraordinarily rapid, right?
Like from the people being informed at 6 PM, I believe it's 6 PM Pacific.
I've been spending a lot of time on Pacer this week.
Yeah. Good old Pacer.
Yep. A lot of the money generated by the adverts in this show on Pacer. So at 6.35 central
time, NM, who is one of the Burmese people in this class action lawsuit, right? So the
lawsuit, a number of people trying to get a tentative restraining order against being
sent to South Sudan now, previously Libya. At 6.35 Central Time, that person's lawyer was
told that they had an order of removal at 9am Pacific, the lawyer had scheduled
a video conference, but at 8.27 Pacific, they were told that that person had
already been removed.
Yeah.
So pretty fast and like
Perhaps that's why they're using these like
Small can you give an idea of like I guess a lot of people won't have flown on small aircraft
But these are quite like this isn't a usual thing right to be me. No, this is a luxury jet
yeah, that you know is moonlighting as a
you know, is moonlighting as a prisoner vessel for kidnappers. And I just, I'm so struck by
the dichotomy of the luxury of this vessel, transporting them to hell, to a country where they do not speak the language, they have no family or friends, to, you know, a country where they do not speak the language, they have no family or friends to, you know,
a prison where people are being tortured that is about to descend into civil war may already
be in civil war.
I mean, the dichotomy of that is so striking to me.
Yeah.
And so perverse.
Yeah, perverse is the right word.
It is like it's perversely ludicrous.
I don't know, like it's so striking to me as well that somebody who has the financial means to own a private
luxury jet to fly themselves around the world is also profiting off the rendition of people
who were trying now to plead and convention against torture right later, they will be
tortured if they are flown via luxury
private jet to South Sudan. And the South Sudanese government seems to have stated that it would
just return them to their countries from which they have withholding of removal in the first
place, which is why the US can't send them to their countries.
Right. That's why the US hasn't done it. Right. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's a diplomatic
pickle, but like the solution is in, we'll just, you know, dump
them somewhere else.
Right.
Yeah.
And then have someone else do our dirty work, like send them back.
Right.
You found these contracts.
Do you know how much DHS is spending like per flight on these things?
I have no idea.
I mean, that is something that that other reporters, I think, are, you know, going to
be better sources of that information.
I've really just begun tracking these flights.
I like to track flights all the time just because I have ADHD.
It's a wonderful activity if you're neurodivergent to spend some time on ADS-B exchange.
But like I said, I was just like, I wonder if I can
find this plane. Yeah. And I did. Yeah. And that has opened up a whole world to me of,
you know, really dedicated people. Tom Cartwright is one and then JJ and DC is another. He wants
to remain anonymous who have been tracking these planes for some time.
And I'm really inspired by them and, you know, want to join them and help them.
Have you ever thought about going voiceover?
I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.
To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is
about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's
political, it's societal, and at times,
it's far from what I originally intended it to be.
These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,
to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships.
I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other.
It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts
of that relationship that are being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime
trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves.
Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party
right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States.
Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves.
This medal is for the men who went down that day.
It's for the families of those who didn't make it.
I'm JR Martinez.
I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself,
and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes
on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage
from Pushkin Industries
and iHeart Podcast.
From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one
of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice.
These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor going above and
beyond the call of duty. I'm
Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project, reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society
all across the world.
Live from the underground, you'll discover no rules fighting, Japanese street racing,
resilient favela life and much more.
All real, completely uncensored.
This is unique access with straightforward underground reporting.
We're taking you deep into the dirt without the usual airs and graces of legacy media.
A way that showcases what the mainstream cannot access.
Real underground reporting with real people, no excuses.
For the past decade I've been going to places I shouldn't be,
meeting people I shouldn't know.
Now you can come along too.
Listen to the your way days podcast,
reporting from the underbelly
on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Giving yourself that agency to not just be one thing, right?
I don't have to be the perception that is crafted or the version of me that everyone
is kind of projecting onto me.
Like I am having my human experience and it is faceted.
It's so faceted and it's fascinating.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and Deeply Well is a sanctuary for your healing.
I'm Devi Brown, healer, wellbeing expert, teacher,
and fellow seeker.
And each week we explore what it means to become whole
through soul expanding conversations and practices.
Why focus on tiny joys?
Well, because they remind us of what it means to be human.
They anchor us in the present moment
and they create ripples of gratitude
that nourish our spirit.
Tiny joys are acts of self-love.
To hear this and more ways to prioritize your piece, listen to Deeply Well from the Black
Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts.
AT&T.
Connecting changes everything.
We see a number of issues, like the questions that we can answer with these things, right? The United States deporting people to Venezuela.
Well, there are lots of entities in Venezuela which are under sanctions, right?
So like, how is it doing that? Who is it paying to do that?
Like, where is our taxpayer money going?
How much is it costing to achieve this rendition of a dozen people, right?
Who at the current time, via recording, which is Thursday afternoon Pacific time, the 22nd
of May, there you go, I just checked the pacer again, which is what I do all day now. And Judge Murphy's most recent order had
clarified that these people would have 10 days to present their reasonable fear, right? So to present
their reasonable fear and convention against torture proceedings that they would be, they could
face torture, right? If they were sent to these places. If the Department of
Homeland Security determined that they didn't have credible fear, then they would have 15
days to again petition for reopening of their migration case. So that's 25 days for those
who are counting. That these people will presumably now have to be accommodated in Djibouti.
Right.
The DHS is claiming that they can do all these interviews and
that one necessitates translators. Like one of them speaks Karen, not a language that
we have. I mean, there are lots of Karen speaking people in the United States, but it's, you
know, it's not language that many immigration lawyers speak. So I'm guessing there will
have to be a translator provided. And so all that is now happening in Djibouti. And like,
we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't been able to track these flights, right? And so all that is now happening in Djibouti and like we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't been able to track
these flights, right? And so it's a very interesting way of
of approaching this and I think like
Increasingly, like the government have recently lost a number of FOIA requests, I guess like public records
Do not move at the same speed as the news cycle does
Uh, like I file a lot of public records requests. Most of them I don't get anything back.
The ones that I do-
Oh, they can take like eight years sometimes.
Yeah, literally.
Yeah.
I mean, I have public records requests
that I made under the previous Trump administration
that I believe are still ongoing.
Yeah, it's infuriatingly slow.
You have a right to inspect these records,
but you don't have a right to
inspect them in any particular time period. And so doing this
kind of open source tracking offers us a window into this
deportation machine that the government is building, right?
Exactly.
In cooperation with the super rich, like using your taxpayer
resources. I wonder if people are interested in doing this,
like how would you suggest they kind of get going?
They're good explainers out there.
I mean the first thing I would do is that I would follow Tom Cartwright and JJNDC on Blue Sky.
Then you know get the Flight Radar 24 app. You can see a lot of the charter planes on that app.
of the charter planes on that app. ADSB exchange is pretty buggy and hard to use if you don't have any aviation experience at all, but you know, you can learn. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, like I said,
if you're neurodivergent, this is a terrific activity to just kind of like massage your brain and hyper focus and, you know, putting it to good purpose to
maybe witness or maybe even stop some of these activities from happening, you know, would be great.
Yeah, I know. I think that's like there are countries which have strong legislation that
could possibly prevent these, you know, these either planes transiting their
airspace or if they're refueling there, as you said, in Ireland, like perhaps prevent
these people being renditioned to somewhere where they might face torture.
I think it's a really valuable thing to try.
Like we should try whatever we can right now.
Yeah.
And I mean, now that Ireland knows this is happening, you know, I don't know what
happened with the Garda on Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning. I don't know if they
were able to board the plane, if they tried to stop it and couldn't. I have no idea.
Yeah.
Now that they know this is happening, maybe they can look a little bit deeper into their laws and regulations and find a justification
so that if this happens again, they can be prepared to respond. You know, I know that the Irish are
exemplars in human rights. And so, you know, if anybody is going to do something, it might be them.
Yeah, yeah. I know RTE are now camped out at the airport waiting for the plane to come
back, which...
Yeah, I know. I wish they had checked with the Avgeeks first because the plane's not
on the way.
Yeah, no.
It's not in here. It hasn't left the duty.
Look at the court proceedings. It's going to be three weeks. But yeah, it's great. You've
made this an issue there, which I think it helps. Like all this stuff makes a difference. I mean, I just, I want the Irish people to realize because none of their lawmakers have
said it yet that Irish authorities knew when the plane was on the ground at Shannon, that
there were people who are possibly being illegally detained on this specific airplane. I just want them to know that.
Yeah.
You know, and I hear that their public information laws are also not great,
but the police there recorded the call. So there's a recording somewhere if they can find it.
Right. I guess I can't find anyone who can answer the satisfactory,
the question of like whose jurisdiction the plane is under. Yeah, I mean, it really depends to like, was the plane
parked in the International Transit area? Was it in a place where, you know, the guard, I didn't
even have authority? I have no idea. Right. You know,
yeah, these are all questions we can now ask because we know that it was there and
I think that's very valuable.
Gillian, where can people follow your work?
You published this on your ghost newsletter first, right?
Yeah, I'm writing a book so I post extremely sporadically, but I do have a ghost newsletter.
It's hardghistory because it's hardg, Gillian, hardghistory.ghost.io and then I'm on bluesky at Gibrock Hill.
Nice.
Do you want to plug your book while you have the opportunity?
I mean, there's not like a pre-order link.
I'm very much still writing it, but my agent will be mad at me for saying this.
The working title is People Didn't Know What Was Wrong back then, the lie at the heart of American history.
I will look forward to reading that.
Thank you. Thanks for having me, James. I really appreciate it.
Thanks for joining us.
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