Secret flights by US through the UK

The United States has reassured Britain that the Counter Intelligence Agency or CIA was not smuggling people suspected of terrorism through the country.  Many in Britain are not buying the assurance offered by the US government and feel the British government is not asking enough questions.

In 2002 on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean two planes from the US landed at a US base carrying suspected terrorists in order to refuel.  This particular event was recently discovered and has caused some embarrassment for Foreign Secretary David Miliband.   On Thursday Miliband requested that a few hundred flights that had raised suspicions be checked by the United States for similar acts.  Milliband said “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 U.S. intelligence flights landed in the United Kingdom, our Overseas Territories, or the Crown Dependencies, with a detainee on board since 11 September 2001.”

A politician who heads a parliamentary group regarding rendition, Andrew Tyrie has said in opposition that “Providing assistance to a plane on the way to or from a rendition could constitute complicity in any subsequent torture of the detainee.  Yet despite my requests, the government persists in refusing to ask questions of the U.S. on this issue.”

A group representing the rights of those taken under rendition has also said in opposition to Miliband’s statement that “The sadly cynical reason for this is obvious: the British government is hoping not to become further embroiled in a scandal in which it is complicit.”