LONDON: Two so-called ‘torture flights’ were allowed to use British sovereign territory, the government admitted yesterday.
After years of denials, the foreign secretary confessed that, after all, American special rendition flights used an airbase on UK soil.
Two flights in 2002 refuelled at a joint British-American airbase called Camp Justice at Diego Garcia, off the coast of Sri Lanka. No indication was given as to the identity of the single captive on board each flight.
David Miliband told MPs that one is now in Guantanamo Bay, the US prison camp in Cuba, and the other has since been released. “Neither is British or a British resident,” said Miliband.
‘Special rendition’ is the CIA term for the kidnapping of terrorist suspects for interrogation abroad. Some have allegedly been subjected to illegal torture techniques including ‘water boarding’ in third-party countries where such practices are not illegal.
The government has always said that such flights would break British law and had assured MPs and human rights campaigners that none has ever taken place from UK soil or landed at a British base for refuelling.
Diego Garcia, a tiny island just 40 miles long in the south Indian ocean, is owned by Britain.
Once uninhabited, it was turned into an airbase to protect oil supplies to the West during the Cold War. Now it is used for refuelling bombers on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There are only 50 British personnel, but there are 2,500 Americans stationed there at any one time.
Miliband apologised to MPs and revealed that the US had specifically denied using Diego Garcia for rendition.
In a Commons answer on December 12, 2005, former foreign secretary Jack Straw ruled out that any special rendition flights had been permitted.
As recently as last March, Tony Blair gave an assurance to the Intelligence and Security Committee that he was satisfied that “the US had at no time since 9/11 rendered an individual through the UK or, crucially, using our overseas territories.”
The only exception was two flights that took place in 1998 through UK airspace, neither of which landed at UK military airfields.
Miliband said: “Contrary to earlier explicit assurances that Diego Garcia had not been used for rendition flights, recent US investigations have now revealed two occasions, both in 2002, when this had in fact occurred.
“An error in the earlier US records search meant that these cases did not come to light.”
Miliband said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “shares my deep regret that this information has only just come to light”. – London Evening Standard