|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes, Kidnappings,
Torture and Big Money |
|
March 10th,
2008 - Fresh Questions on Torture Flights Spark Demands for Inquiry |
|
Fresh Questions
on Torture Flights Spark Demands for Inquiry By Richard Norton-Taylor & Duncan Campbell The Guardian March 10 2008 MPs and human rights groups
yesterday demanded an independent inquiry into the use of UK territory by CIA
"torture flights" as fresh questions emerged over the government's
handling of the issue. Ministers are coming under
growing pressure as officials made it clear they still could not be certain
of the extent to which US aircraft made use of British facilities when taking
alleged terrorists to prisons where they were likely to be subjected to inhumane
treatment. Last month, David Miliband,
the foreign secretary, apologised to MPs, admitting that contrary to
"earlier explicit assurances" two flights had landed at Diego
Garcia, the British Indian Ocean territory where the US has a large airbase.
He said the flights had refuelled there, and each had had a single detainee
on board who did not leave the aircraft. British and US officials
have refused to give details about the two detainees other than that one was
in Guantánamo Bay and the other had been released. Miliband said he had asked
his officials for a list of all flights on which rendition had been alleged. British officials said
yesterday they were "working behind the scenes" in an attempt to
get more information from the Americans. The Guardian has learned that Lord
Malloch Brown, the Foreign Office minister, has spoken to Manfred Novak, the
UN's special investigator on torture, about the alleged use of Diego Garcia
as a detention centre to hold US suspects. Novak said he had credible
evidence from sources he could not reveal that detainees were held on the
island between 2002 and 2003. British officials say they have no evidence of
this. Some representatives of human rights groups who met FCO officials last
week suggested records of the CIA flights may have been destroyed. Flight plan records show
that one of the aircraft, registered N379P, flew in September 2002 from Diego
Garcia to Morocco. From there it flew to Portugal and then to Kabul.
Passenger names have been blacked out. However, Reprieve, which represents
prisoners faced with the death penalty and torture, said that in Kabul the
aircraft picked up Al-Sharqawi and Hassan bin Attash, two suspects who were
tortured in Jordan before being rendered to Afghanistan and flown to
Guantánamo Bay. Those rendered through Diego Garcia remain unidentified. In a
letter to Miliband, Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said:
"It is certainly not going to rebuild public confidence if we say that
two people were illegally taken through British territory but then refuse to
reveal the fates of these men." His call for an independent
inquiry was echoed by Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, and Andrew
Tyrie, Tory chairman of the parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition,
pressed Miliband to seek more information from the US, including reports that
detainees were held on the island or on US ships anchored nearby. External link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/10/ciarendition.terrorism |