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  • UK provided more support for CIA rendition flights than thought – study

    The Rendition Project suggests aircraft associated with secret detention operations landed at British airports 1,622 times

    US warplanes at their base in the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Photograph: Usaf/AFP

    The UK’s support for the CIA’s global rendition programme after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US was far more substantial than has previously been recognised, according to a new research project that draws on a vast number of publicly available data and documentation.

    Evidence gathered by The Rendition Project – an interactive website that maps thousands of rendition flights – highlight 1,622 flights in and out of the UK by aircraft now known to have been involved in the agency’s secret kidnap and detention programme.

    While many of those flights may not have been involved in rendition operations, the researchers behind the project have drawn on testimony from detainees, Red Cross reports, courtroom evidence, flight records and invoices to show that at least 144 were entering the UK while suspected of being engaged in rendition operations.

    While the CIA used UK airports for refuelling and overnight stopovers, there is no evidence that any landed in the UK with prisoners on board. This may suggest that the UK government denied permission for this. In some cases, it is unclear whether the airline companies would have been aware of the purpose of the flights.

    Some 51 different UK airports were used by 84 different aircraft that have been linked by researchers to the rendition programme. Only the US and Canada were visited more frequently. The most used UK airport was Luton, followed by Glasgow Prestwick and Stansted. There were also flights in and out of RAF Northolt and RAF Brize Norton.

    The CIA’s use of UK airports was first reported by the Guardian in September 2005. Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, dismissed the evidence, telling MPs in December that year that “unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States … there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition.”

    Straw told the same MPs that media reports of UK involvement in the mistreatment of detainees were “in the realms of the fantastic”. Documentation subsequently disclosed in the high court in London showed that Straw had consigned British citizens to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba after they were detained in Afghanistan in 2001.

     

    New light shed on US government’s extraordinary rendition programme

    22 May 2013

    Online project uncovers details of way in which CIA carried out kidnaps and secret detentions following September 11 attacks

    • The Rendition Project interactive
    • CIA rendition flights explained

    22 May 2013

    US rendition map: what it means, and how to use it

    22 May 2013

    US rendition: every suspected flight mapped

    21 May 2013

    Abdel Hakim Belhaj torture case may be heard in secret court

    UK funds poll in Pakistan on US drone attacks

    18 May 2013

    Foreign Office sponsored surveys investigating impact of CIA drone campaign in Pakistan, minister Alistair Burt tells MPs

    Ian Cobain and James Ball
    The Guardian, Wednesday 22 May 2013 12.02 BST

    Find this story at 22 May 2013

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