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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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August 9th,
2009 - U.K. Lawmakers Eye Treatment of U.S. Terror Suspects |
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U.K. Lawmakers Eye Treatment
of U.S. Terror Suspects From the Associated Press August 9, 2009 London - Britain should more
closely monitor U.S. activity on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia to
ensure American officials aren't using the British territory for the rendition
or interrogation of terror suspects, a group of U.K. lawmakers said Sunday. A committee of
parliamentarians said the U.K. needs to press its ally to reveal the full
extent of its activities on the remote but strategically important air base -
halfway between Africa and Southeast Asia - which has been leased to the U.S.
to be used as a military base since the 1970s. Britain's Foreign Office had
claimed the U.S. offered assurances that the outpost hasn't been used to
detain suspects. But in February 2008 the U.S. acknowledged that previous
denials that the island had been used by so-called extraordinary rendition
flights had been wrong. The State Department said it had misled the British
government, and confirmed that two suspects had been on flights that refueled
on Diego Garcia en route to Guantanamo Bay and Morocco in 2002. The move
deeply embarrassed the British government, which insisted until early last
year that the practice didn't happen. Lawmakers on the House of
Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said in a report that it is
"deplorable that previous U.S. assurances about rendition flights
through Diego Garcia have turned out to be false" and said the incident
had undermined Britain's trust in U.S. assurances. It said the government should
keep a closer eye on what the U.S. is doing on Diego Garcia, for example by
keeping meticulous records of U.S. planes and ships transiting through the
island and by demanding the names, so far held secret, of the two men
transferred through Diego Garcia in 2002. The report also pressed the
government to clarify whether the 2002 incident broke British law. Britain's relationship with
Pakistan also came under the microscope. The report warned that using
information supplied by foreign-intelligence agencies implicated in the
torture could amount to complicity in the abuse -- and singled out Pakistan's
intelligence service as a particularly problematic partner. "The practices of the
Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence give rise for great concern," the
report said. "We are very concerned that the nature of the relationship
that the U.K. have with the ISI may have led them to be complicit in
torture." It recommended that Britain be emphatic with its foreign
partners that torture is unacceptable. Britain's Foreign Secretary
David Miliband said Britain didn't collude in torture, but acknowledged the
country couldn't guarantee how detainees were treated by foreign governments.
"Operations have been halted where the risk of mistreatment was judged
to be too high. But it is not possible to eradicate all risk. Judgments need
to be made," he said in an article co-written with Home Secretary Alan
Johnson in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. Copyright © 2009 Associated
Press External link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124979542444017323.html |