US Senate
report may confirm that Diego Garcia was used for extraordinary rendition after
9/11
The Guardian, The Observer, Jamie Doward and Ian Cobain, Saturday 2 August 2014
 |
| Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, is known to have detention facilities. Photograph: Corbis |
The
government stands accused of seeking to conceal Britain's role in extraordinary
rendition, ahead of the release of a declassified intelligence report that
exposes the use of torture at US secret prisons around the world.
The Senate
report on the CIA's interrogation programme, due to be released in days, will
confirm that the US tortured terrorist suspects after 9/11. In advance of the
release, Barack Obama admitted on Friday: "We tortured some folks. We did
some things that were contrary to our values."
Now, in a
letter to the human rights group Reprieve, former foreign secretary William Hague has confirmed that the UK government has held discussions with the US
about what it intends to reveal in the report which, according to al-Jazeera,
acknowledges that the British territory of Diego Garcia was used for
extraordinary rendition.
"We
have made representations to seek assurances that ordinary procedures for
clearance of UK material will be followed in the event that UK material
provide[d] to the Senate committee were to be disclosed," Hague wrote.
Cori
Crider, a director at Reprieve, accused the UK government of seeking to redact
embarrassing information: "This shows that the UK government is attempting
to censor the US Senate's torture report. In plain English, it is a request to
the US to keep Britain's role in rendition out of the public domain."
Lawyers
representing a number of terrorist suspects held at Guantánamo Bay believe
their clients were rendered via Diego Garcia. Papers found in Libya indicated
that the US planned to transport Abdul-Hakim Belhaj, an opponent of Muammar
Gaddafi, and his wife via the territory, an atoll in the Indian Ocean leased by
Britain to the US. The government has denied Belhaj was rendered via Diego
Garcia, but there are suspicions that others were held on the atoll.
Crider said
the UK's attempts to lobby the US into redacting parts of the report
"turns the government's defence in the Libyan renditions case of
Abdul-Hakim Belhaj and his wife entirely on its head".
The
government has consistently sought to block Belhaj from bringing a case against
it.
"The
government protested America would be angered if this kidnap case ever went to
trial – and now we learn the British government is leaning on the Americans not
to air Britain's dirty laundry. It exposes their litigation stance as mere
posturing," she added.
Confirmation
that a British territory was involved in extraordinary rendition could leave
the government vulnerable to legal action. Last month the European court of
human rights ruled that the Polish government actively assisted the CIA's
European "black site" programme, which saw detainees interrogated in
secret prisons across the continent.
The court
concluded it was "established beyond reasonable doubt" that Abu
Zubaydah, a Guantánamo detainee the US mistakenly believed to be a senior
member of al-Qaida, was flown from a secret site in Thailand to another CIA
prison in Stare Kiejkuty in northern Poland.
The judges
concluded that not only was Poland "informed of and involved in the
preparation and execution of the [High Value Detainee] Programme on its
territory", but also "for all practical purposes, facilitated the
whole process, created the conditions for it to happen and made no attempt to
prevent it", prompting lawyers to ask what else it has been used for
since.
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