BBC NEWS UK Politics – MPs want ‘torture flights’ answer: “There is growing pressure from MPs for ministers to shed light on claims that the CIA has used UK airports to move suspects to other nations for torture.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We are not aware of the use of UK territory or airspace for the purpose of extraordinary rendition, nor have we received any requests, nor granted any permission for the use of UK territory or airspace for such purposes.”
Mr Straw has said he expressed concern about the claims about secret prisons on EU territory in his letter to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The US government has said its laws have not been broken.
But it has refused to confirm or deny the existence of “secret prisons” in third countries. “
Pretty serious allegations. It has already been established that the US Government exports it’s torture of terrorist suspects, but I don’t think people were expecting those places to be Farnborough and Luton (though the latter would be torturous enough).
Since the BBC article was written, Dr Rice responded to the German foreign minister that the US government will give an official response to the allegations. Germany has received even more of these mystery flights than the UK.
Update
So, the BBC reports that Rice has spoken to Merkel in Germany. “Ms Rice admitted that terror suspects were flown abroad for interrogation but denied they were tortured. “
But what I want to know is that if all US and international law is being followed, as Rice states, then why fly them to a different country at all? Rice said suspects were moved by plane under a process known as rendition, and that this was “a lawful weapon”.
What’s rendition? It’s not a word that’s well explained in the dictionary, but here’s the Wikipedia entry, which although seemingly clear is somewhat vague on what the legal term of rendition actually means.
technorati tags: rendition, uk politics, condoleezza, torture flights