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TechnoratiIdentity of Men on CIA Rendition Flights to British Island Revealed
Two terror suspects who were flown by the CIA to the British territory of Diego Garcia and later allegedly tortured have been named and evidence about their treatment has been revealed for the first time. Mohammed Madni and Shaykh al-Libi are identified in evidence prepared for the Commons foreign affairs committee by Clive Stafford Smith, director of the human rights group Reprieve.
![[Air Base of Diego Garcia located in the Indian Ocean.]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/diegogarcia-2.jpg "diegogarcia-2.jpg")
They are the two men, said Stafford Smith, referred to, but not identified, by David Miliband, the foreign secretary, when last year, after repeated denials by ministers, he admitted that two people had been rendered through the island in the Indian Ocean in 2002. Miliband said he did not know who the men were.
Stafford Smith said detailed research showed that Madni, who holds dual Pakistani-Egyptian nationality, was rendered through Diego Garcia in January 2002. He was subsequently jailed and interrogated in Egypt and flown to Guantánamo.
Madni was later freed and returned to Pakistan where Reprieve's lawyers met him. "He has been effectively crippled by his torture," said Stafford Smith.
The other man rendered through the US base on the island was likely to be Libi, he added. While questioned in Egypt, Libi claimed that al-Qaida was in league with Saddam Hussein, a claim now accepted by the US to be false. He was recently freed and died in Libya two weeks ago.
Stafford Smith was due to present his evidence on Diego Garcia to the foreign affairs committee last week but was prevented from doing so on the grounds that the other issue he was expected to testify on - the treatment of Binyam Mohammed, the UK resident who was jailed in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, before being flown to Guantánamo - was sub judice.
Mike Gapes, the committee's Labour chairman, said he had received advice that the cases due to be raised fell "wholly within the house sub judice resolution". The resolution states that "cases in which proceedings are active in UK courts shall not be referred to in any motion, debate or question". Mohammed's treatment before he was flown to Guantánamo is the subject of a police investigation into "possible criminal wrongdoing" by the CIA and an MI5 officer.
Stafford Smith said the advice was wrong and that the Mohammed case had been frequently raised in the Commons and the Lords. "It is time for the UK government to come clean about its role in Madni's 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," he said.
Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said last night: "These astonishing allegations fly in the face of the assurances given by the foreign secretary to parliament. The use of British territory for illegal state abduction and detention is unacceptable". Research by his party found that the government had systematically destroyed flight logs for the Diego Garcia US airbase, Davey added.
9 Comments so far
Show AllNative son: "If these people had been members of any other 'organized crime operation' they could/should expect their co-conspirators to 'roll over on them'..."
I agree. It's time we start offering lower-ranking war criminals immunity in exchange for their testimony against the top crusaders.
the british island?
I'm tired.
I've written hundreds of articles over the past nine years, reprinted the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and the "Nuremberg Principles" in many venues. I've studied government documents until my eyes were tired and put the gist of them out on the internet for people to learn, and hopefully to act.
What do I see? The same shadowy figures are still in charge, only the puppets change. This one can actualy speak English and is of a darker hue. Other than that, all stays the same, drifting downward towards the abyss, while We the Sheeple watch Faux "news" and American Idol or whatever else has come to the fore, and endless professional sports.
Rome lasted for a time by providing bread and circuses to its populace to keep them quiet. Eventually, but too late, that didn't work anymore.
I'm tired. I think I'll go reread "Through the Looking Glass," it seems to make much more sense.
Use either Google Earth or go to this Global Security website http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/diego-garcia-imagery-3.htm
Those are B-52s, C-5s, and B-1s in the Global Security photos. From Google Earth you can also look at some interesting buildings. We can speculate on which buildings are being used to the do the torturing but it would be more interesting to know the names of the individuals who do it so that they can be prosecuted.
Since Spokane, Washington is the location of the operations of the CIA torture psychologists Mitchell and Jessen who reverse engineered U.S. SERE survival techniques to create more effective torture techniques, I am guessing they have been to Diego Garcia. I also suspect that some "terrorist suspects" have been flown by the U.S. military and other government agencies to Spokane to be tortured. I mean, after all, if you are training world class pilots and special forces and CIA and others to resist torture at the SERE facilities in Spokane, you would certainly bring world class interrogators and torturers in to pit them against. In that case, why not bring the "terrorist suspects" in as well. That way, Jessen and Mitchell and the large number of their collaborators have an actual laboratory. http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2065837/6512487
We know that Spokane has numerous "companies" associated with U.S. intelligence, security, and survival located here, including in the old American Legion Building at Washington and Riverside. And we know from extensive national and international reporting something about the role of Mitchell and Jessen and others here in the human rights abuses by the U.S. government in this "war on terrorism". Yet much more is to be disclosed. I for one want to know how many of our local law enforcement, in particular those involved in recent homicides and misconduct, as well as those involved in JTTF actions on July 4, 2007 in Riverfront Park and other repression of and spying on protesters here, are SERE graduates.
The entire history of US/British involvement in Diego Garcia is a chapter in history filled with human rights abuses and crimes against humanity - Not only for the recent prisoners there, but also the original native population. It is time to allow the native population to return and for the US/Brits to pay reparations.
If you are not informed on this topic, please read my article titled "The Secret that the Government Kept For 30 Years". http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/jackowski08012004
Is this what Tony Blair used to pass the test to join the Roman Catholic Church?
Finally, we have more evidence of the collaboration of the British in these crimes. Despite all the denials by David "millipede" Milliband (with Labour leaders like him, who needs Conservatives? Sound familiar?) Tony "Baloney" Blair and others, we see once again that they can look straight into a camera or face and tell a bald faced lie without even a twitch. It seems they are so accustomed to lying it is second nature.
Just like in 2006 when Toney Baloney denied allowing USAF supply planes, loaded to the gills with cluster bombs and other WMD, headed for Israel, to re-fuell in the UK. Then later the truth came out, once again catching Tony in a blatant lie.
"And that Blair was so sly, and so slick
He thought up a Lie, and thought it up quick"
Now that the 'victims' names have been revealed, it is time to reveal the perpetrators.
Those aircraft needed Pilots, and Copilots, and other crew members.
Then there are the many others who participated.
If these people had been members of any other 'organized crime operation' they could/should expect their co-conspirators to 'roll over on them' and turn evidence against them in any trial---if not for the money offered for that testimony, then to save their own lives from the 'jail house blues'.
But this is not the case, and most of them know it. The higher up the 'social/political ladder' the criminals, the easier it is for them to escape prosecution for their crimes---no matter how heinous they may be.
And until the 'people' that these 'people' 'govern' decide that to commit crimes in their name is the most egregious of endeavors; the GW Bushs, and Tony Blairs and all of the other "Muppet's" will simply do what they have always done; exactly what they damn well please.
If the USA truly wants to be a world 'leader' then leadership by example is the most effective---even though it may be the most difficult----then the USA has no other choice but to set the example for that leadership, in a positive manner. For America that would be a first---for that matter for Great Briton also.
But that may be what they have been doing all along---its just not the kind of leadership that 'civilized nations' would recognize as a 'positive example'.........
Good luck America, you really need it.
Like we used to say... Tell it like it is!