Miliband rendition flight admission may be tip of iceberg

3.00.00pm GMT Thu 21st Feb 2008

Commenting on David Miliband's admission that 2 US flights landed in Diego Garcia in 2002 on their way to 'render' prisoners to Morocco and Guantanamo Bay, Liberal Democrat MEP Baroness Sarah Ludford, who was vice-chair of the European Parliament's committee on extraordinary rendition which reported a year ago said:

"It is shameful that the UK government, passive and dependent to the last, has had to rely on crumbs of information from Condi Rice about what happened on UK territory. They just turned a blind eye in relying on US 'good faith'. Just like the case of exonerated pilot Lofti Raissi who narrowly escaped extradition without any evidence, London acted pathetically as the unquestioning agent of Washington in accepting dodgy 'war on terror' practices."

"There is no way of knowing if this is the tip of an iceberg, or indeed if Diego Garcia or any other British territories have been used as secret prisons. When the European Parliament expressed serious concern about stopovers at UK airports of 170 CIA flights to and from rendition destinations, we were dismissed as paranoid fantasists. My own presumption in challenging UK denials resulted in a complaint by Geoff Hoon to the European Parliament president."

"This admission has removed any last shred of excuse about the failure to instigate a full and pro-active investigation into the many credible allegations of British collusion in torture flights."

You can find out more details about this issue in a Daily Mail article here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=517228&in_page_id=1811