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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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July 8th,
2008 - Scandal at Diego Garcia |
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Rendition Flights Strain US-UK Relations By Andy Worthington Counterpunch July 8, 2008 This has been a bad week for
the British government, in relation to two of the running sores of its
foreign policy, both centered on the Overseas Territory of Diego Garcia in
the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia and the
surrounding islands - known collectively as the Chagos Islands - were
shamefully cleared of their existing population in the late 1960s, to make
way for a US airbase on Diego Garcia itself. This was a manifestation of the
“special relationship” between the UK and the US, which involved the old
empire facilitating its successor’s global reach, in exchange for a
significant discount on the UK’s nuclear missile programme. Ever since, the exiled
Chagossians have been attempting to regain access to their ancestral lands,
but with limited success. Although successive British governments have toned
down the racist rhetoric used at the time of the islanders’ forced removal -
when official documents referred to them as “Tarzans or Men Fridays” - Diego
Garcia and the Chagos Islands have remained at the forefront of a colonial
mindset that has never quite been extirpated from the Foreign Office’s
mentality. Although the islanders won a
stunning victory in the High Court in 2000, which ruled that their expulsion
had been illegal, the government fought back in 2003, when Prime Minster Tony
Blair invoked an ancient and archaic “royal prerogative” to strike down their
claims once more. Although the court of appeal reversed this decision in May
2006, ruling that the islanders’ right to return was “one of the most
fundamental liberties known to human beings,” it was clear that, in the
struggle between a group of cruelly disposed islanders on the one hand, and
the US military-industrial complex on the other, the Chagossians’ fight was
far from over. Last week, just after a
party of Chagossians visited London to hear lawyers for the Foreign Office
appealing in the House of Lords against the 2006 verdict and claiming, as the
Guardian put it, that “[a]llowing the Chagossian islanders to go back to
their Indian Ocean homes would be a ‘precarious and costly’ operation,” and
that “the United States had said that it would also present an ‘unacceptable
risk’ to its base on Diego Garcia,” David Miliband, the foreign secretary,
delivered a short statement relating to the other scandal of Diego Garcia:
its use for “extraordinary rendition” flights in the “War on Terror.” After years of denials by
the British government that rendition flights had passed through Diego
Garcia, David Miliband admitted in February that he had just been informed by
his US counterparts that, upon searching their records, they had discovered
that two flights had stopped on Diego Garcia in 2002. “In both cases a US
plane with a single detainee on board refuelled at the US facility in Diego
Garcia,” Miliband said. “The detainees did not leave the plane, and the US
Government has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego
Garcia. US investigations show no record of any other rendition through Diego
Garcia or any other Overseas Territory or through the UK itself since then.” At the time, I noted that
this appeared to be a sly form of damage limitation, as there was compelling
evidence that, far from being used on just two occasions as a transit point,
the island had actually housed a secret prison. Three examples will suffice for
now, although it’s a safe bet that more revelations are forthcoming. In October 2003, Time
magazine ran an exclusive feature by Simon Elegant focusing on the
imprisonment of Hambali, a “high-value detainee,” who spent years in various
secret CIA prisons - including Diego Garcia - until he was transferred to
Guantánamo in September 2006. Other evidence came from Council of Europe
investigator (and Swiss senator) Dick Marty, who reported in June 2006 that,
having spoken to senior CIA officers during his research, he had “received
concurring confirmations that United States agencies have used Diego Garcia,
which is the international legal responsibility of the UK, in the
‘processing’ of high-value detainees.’” The final piece of evidence
came from inside the US administration itself, when Barry McCaffrey, a
retired four-star US general, and currently a professor of international
security studies at the West Point military academy, let slip on two
occasions that Diego Garcia had housed a secret prison. In May 2004, he
blithely declared, “We’re probably holding around 3,000 people, you know,
Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq,” and in
December 2006 he slipped the leash again, saying, “They’re behind bars …
we’ve got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram air field, in Guantánamo.” David Miliband’s statement
last Thursday did nothing to suggest that the British government had any
intention of pushing the matter further with its US allies, even though, as
the sovereign power in charge of the islands, the ministers are unable to
evade responsibility for what has taken place on Diego Garcia. Rather feebly, the foreign
secretary stated that, after sending a list of possible rendition flights
that may have passed through British territory to the US authorities, “The
United States Government confirmed that, with the exception of two cases
related to Diego Garcia in 2002, there have been no other instances in which
US intelligence flights landed in the United Kingdom, our Overseas Territories,
or the Crown Dependencies, with a detainee on board since 11 September 2001.” Reprieve, the legal action
charity that has spent several years investigating “extraordinary rendition”
and secret prisons, responded by pointing out that the British government
“intentionally failed to ask the right questions of the US, and accepted
implausible US assurances at face value,” noting that the Foreign Office had
declined to ask the US government for the names of the prisoners transported
via Diego Garcia in 2002, that it had failed to ask if any other rendition
flights had passed through Diego Garcia, even if, as the US asserted, no
other planes landed there, and had also failed to ask whether any other
flights passed through UK territory en route to engaging in “extraordinary
rendition,” which would make the UK complicit in the crime. The British government faced
a fresh barrage of criticism just three days later, when the Foreign Affairs
Select Committee published its latest report on the Overseas Territories.
With reference to Diego Garcia, the Committee declared that “it is deplorable
that previous US assurances about rendition flights have turned out to be
false. The failure of the United States Administration to tell the truth
resulted in the UK Government inadvertently misleading our Select Committee
and the House of Commons. We intend to examine further the extent of UK
supervision of US activities on Diego Garcia, including all flights and ships
serviced from Diego Garcia.” For good measure, the
Committee also had harsh words about the government’s treatment of the
Chagossians, noting, “We conclude that there is a strong moral case for the
UK permitting and supporting a return ... for the Chagossians. The FCO
(Foreign Office) has argued that such a return would be unsustainable, but we
find these arguments less than convincing.” Under pressure on two fronts
over Diego Garcia, it remains to be seen whether the government can once more
worm its way out of trouble. Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the all-party
parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, is keen not to let this
happen. Speaking after the report was published, he chastised the foreign
secretary for dismissing his concerns about “extraordinary rendition” when he
first raised the issue last October. “The Foreign Secretary persistently gave
me the brush-off. He said we could rely on US assurances,” Tyrie said,
adding, “My allegations were correct. The Foreign Secretary's brush-off was
not just misplaced, it was a disgrace.” Reprieve was even more
blunt, stating, “This remains a transatlantic cover-up of epic proportions.
While the British government seems content to accept whatever nonsense it is
fed by its US allies, the sordid truth about Diego Garcia’s central role in
the unjust rendition and detention of prisoners in the so-called ‘War on
Terror’ cannot be hidden forever.” Andy Worthington is a
British historian, and the author of 'The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of
the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (published by Pluto Press). External link: http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington07082008.html |