THE government has rejected demands for new laws against ‘extraordinary rendition’: the practice of kidnapping and flying detainees to secret sites around the world, to be tortured.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw has rejected legislation to ban unlawful transfers of detainees through British airspace, on the grounds that it would be too ‘burdensome’ for airlines.
Ex-detainees who ended up in Guantanamo Bay have alleged that Britain colluded in their rendition and colluded in their torture.
Human rights groups say British airports and the US military base at Diego Garcia (in British Indian Ocean Territory) have been used to render prisoners on behalf of the CIA.
Justice Secretary Straw wrote to Andrew Tyrie MP, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition, which has joined Amnesty, Reprieve, Liberty, and Human Rights Watch in demanding a judicial inquiry into the scandal.
The Parliamentary Group proposed new laws to criminalise assistance provided by people in the UK to all rendition flights, with or without detainees on board.
But Straw refused, saying that new laws ‘would not make any difference’ and would impose disproportionate obligations on private companies.
Government ministers have twice had to admit British involvement in the rendition of two Iraqis to Afghanistan and two foreign nationals through Diego Garcia.
A Council of Europe report, written by Swiss senator Dick Marty, described Prestwick Airport in Scotland as a ‘Category A’ stopover facility for rendition flights, providing refuelling and support services.
The All Party Parliamentary Group slammed the failure to bring any prosecutions over the use of British airspace for ‘circuit flights’ or rendition flights via Diego Garcia.
A former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni, alleges he was detained in Indonesia in January 2002 and rendered to Egypt, where he was tortured for three months.
He alleges that he was beaten, electrocuted, denied medical treatment and hung from hooks.
His lawyers, legal charity Reprieve, cite ‘considerable circumstantial evidence’ that the plane carrying him from Indonesia to Egypt passed through Diego Garcia.
In 2008 the government was forced to admit to the use of Diego Garcia, after the United States said it had used the military base there for rendition flights.
Madni’s lawyers have taken his case to the High Court in London, where they are seeking a judicial review of the government’s refusal to release documents, which they say could support his case.
Demanding a full inquiry, the All-Party Parliamentary Group, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Liberty and Reprieve said: ‘The public should not have to rely on occasional speeches and lengthy judicial cases to discover the truth about such a serious issue.’
