While Washington has admitted to the practice, known as "rendition", Britain has previously said it was not aware of any British territory being used since U.S. President George W. Bush took office in 2001.
Miliband admits US rendition flights stopped on UK soil"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," Miliband told MPs.
He said
he had
discussed the
issue with the US secretary of state,
Condoleezza Rice.
"We both agree that the
mistakes made in these two cases are not acceptable, and she shares my deep regret that this information has only just come to light," Miliband said.
"There have been long-standing suspicions that the CIA has used one of its so-called "black site" prisons on Diego Garcia, home to a large US military base, to hold suspects, although
Miliband today assured MPs that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia."
See this also:
Dating back 5 years connecting Diego Garcia to secret prisons/tortureExcerpts from several news articles:
"The Washington Post paints a harrowing picture of the
procedures for extracting information from terrorism suspects at such centres as Diego Garcia, the Indian Ocean island leased from Britain, and Bagram, the large US airbase in Afghanistan."
"The off-limits patch of ground at Bagram is one of a number of secret detention centers overseas where U.S. due process does not apply, according to several U.S. and European national security officials,
where the CIA undertakes or manages the interrogation of suspected terrorists. Another is Diego Garcia, a somewhat horseshoe-shaped island in the Indian Ocean that the United States leases from Britain."
"The article, by Dana Priest and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post,
graphically reveals how U.S. interrogators at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan,
on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, and at other overseas sites, have brutally treated al Qaeda and Taliban forces in a "brass-knuckled quest for information" to uncover future terrorist plots.
These detention centers (including the Bagram and Diego Garcia facilities) are off limits to independent agencies such as the Red Cross, which might monitor prisoner conditions and treatment."
Records show Diego Garcia link to alleged torture flights
"The journeys of the aircraft, a Gulfstream registered N379P, are disclosed in a list of more than 3,000 flight logs obtained by Stephen Grey, an investigative journalist and author of Ghost Plane. The same aircraft flew from Washington via Athens to the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia, the logs show. It is the first time that the British-owned territory, where the US has a large airbase, has been linked to the controversial CIA flights.
Though there have been persistent reports in the US that detainees have been secretly held in Diego Garcia, the British government has always dismissed the claims."
For 5 years Diego Garcia has been connected to
more than just rendition flights landing and taking off...
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