UK's Own Gitmo Hides Some Dirty Secrets
The Orange Party
June 01, 2009
The shameful cover-up by the foreign secretary who lied to parliament over illegal secret renditions on the tiny crown island of Diego Garcia has been exposed, while the government’s disgraceful dirty little secret has been systematically wiped from the official record.
Time and again the … government has scoffed at suggestions the island was used as a Guantanamo (Gitmo) style black-site prison.
Now two terror suspects who were flown by the CIA to the UK territory and later allegedly tortured have been named and evidence about their treatment has been revealed for the first time, according to the Guardian. …
After repeated denials by ministers, fresh evidence prepared for the commons foreign affairs committee by Clive Stafford Smith, of the human rights group Reprieve, show two men, referred to by foreign secretary, David Miliband, had been rendered through the island in 2002.
And the government had systematically destroyed flight logs for the US airbase, according to LibDems foreign affairs spokesman Edward Davy.
The government has an appalling record over the tiny island in the Indian Ocean since leasing it out to the US in the 1970s. Then locals were forced out to live in poverty more than 1,000 miles away in Mauritius, so the island could be turned into a US military base.
One of the alleged terrorists held at Diego Garcia cited in the Reprieve evidence before he was flown on to Gitmo is the subject of a police investigation into “possible criminal wrongdoing” by the CIA and an MI5 officer.
Stafford Smith said: “It is time for the UK government to come clean about its role in the detention and to reveal who else has been held on and rendered through Diego Garcia, what happened to them there, and where they are now.”
Unlike Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, no-one can drop by Diego Garcia, even with a UK passport. Anyone entering territorial waters will be arrested. The island, which has a huge airstrip, is full of US military …
The government has a shameful record over the use of the island and the treatment of its people. In 2004, Blair exiled the whole population from the Overseas Territory when he issued an Order of Council stopping the islanders from ever going back, using the ‘royal prerogative’ without recourse to parliament or the crown.
http://theorangepartyblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/uks-secret-gitmo-exposed_5737.html
