Diego Garcia – Another Link in a Global Ring of U.S. Torture Centers

Diego Garcia and the surrounding islands
– known collectively as the Chagos Islands – were shamefully cleared of their existing population in the late 1960s,
to make way for a US airbase on Diego Garcia itself. This was a manifestation
of the “special relationship” between the UK and the US, which involved
the old empire facilitating its successor’s global reach, in exchange
for a significant discount on the UK’s Trident nuclear missile programme.

Ever since, the exiled Chagossians have
been attempting to regain access to their ancestral lands, but with
limited success. Although successive British governments have toned
down the racist rhetoric used at the time of the islanders” forced
removal – when official documents referred to them as “Tarzans or
Men Fridays” – Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands have remained
at the forefront of a colonial mindset that has never quite been extirpated
from the Foreign Office’s mentality.

Although the islanders won a stunning
victory in the High Court in 2000, which ruled that their expulsion
had been illegal, the government fought back in 2003, when Prime Minster
Tony Blair invoked an ancient and archaic “royal prerogative” to
strike down their claims once more. Although the court of appeal reversed
this decision in May 2006, ruling that the islanders” right to return
was “one of the most fundamental liberties known to human beings,”
it was clear that, in the struggle between a group of cruelly disposed
islanders on the one hand, and the US military-industrial complex on
the other, the Chagossians” fight was far from over.

Last week, just after a party of Chagossians
visited London to hear lawyers for the Foreign Office appealing in the
House of Lords against the 2006 verdict and claiming, as the Guardian put it, that “[a]llowing the Chagossian islanders
to go back to their Indian Ocean homes would be a “precarious and
costly” operation,” and that “the United States had said that
it would also present an “unacceptable risk” to its base on Diego
Garcia,” David Miliband, the foreign secretary, delivered a short
statement relating to the other scandal of Diego Garcia: its use for
“extraordinary rendition” flights in the “War on Terror.”

After years of denials by the British
government that rendition flights had passed through Diego Garcia, David
Miliband admitted in February that he had just been informed by
his US counterparts that, upon searching their records, they had discovered
that two flights had stopped on Diego Garcia in 2002. “In both cases
a US plane with a single detainee on board refuelled at the US facility
in Diego Garcia,” Miliband said. “The detainees did not leave the
plane, and the US Government has assured us that no US detainees have
ever been held on Diego Garcia. US investigations show no record of
any other rendition through Diego Garcia or any other Overseas Territory
or through the UK itself since then.”

At the time, I noted that this appeared
to be a sly form of damage limitation, as there was compelling evidence
that, far from being used on just two occasions as a transit point,
the island had actually housed a secret prison. Three examples will
suffice for now, although it’s a safe bet that more revelations are
forthcoming.

In October 2003, Time
magazine ran an exclusive feature by Simon Elegant focusing on the imprisonment
of Hambali, a “high-value detainee,” who spent years in various
secret CIA prisons – including Diego Garcia – until he was transferred
to Guantánamo in September 2006. Other evidence came from Council of
Europe investigator (and Swiss senator) Dick Marty, who reported in
June 2006 that, having spoken to senior CIA officers during his research,
he had “received concurring confirmations that United States agencies
have used Diego Garcia, which is the international legal responsibility
of the UK, in the “processing” of high-value detainees.””

The final piece of evidence came from
inside the US administration itself, when Barry McCaffrey, a retired
four-star US general, and currently a professor of international security
studies at the West Point military academy, let slip on two occasions
that Diego Garcia had housed a secret prison. In May 2004, he blithely
declared, “We”re probably holding around 3,000 people, you know,
Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq,”
and in December 2006 he slipped the leash again, saying, “They”re
behind bars ” we”ve got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram air field,
in Guantánamo.”

David Miliband’s statement last Thursday
did nothing to suggest that the British government had any intention
of pushing the matter further with its US allies, even though, as the
sovereign power in charge of the islands, the ministers are unable to
evade responsibility for what has taken place on Diego Garcia.

Rather feebly, the foreign secretary
stated that, after sending a list of possible rendition flights that
may have passed through British territory to the US authorities, “The
United States Government confirmed that, with the exception of two cases
related to Diego Garcia in 2002, there have been no other instances
in which US intelligence flights landed in the United Kingdom, our Overseas
Territories, or the Crown Dependencies, with a detainee on board since
11 September 2001.”

Reprieve, the legal action charity that
has spent several years investigating “extraordinary rendition”
and secret prisons, responded by pointing out that the British government
“intentionally failed to ask the right questions of the US, and accepted
implausible US assurances at face value,” noting that the Foreign
Office had declined to ask the US government for the names of the prisoners
transported via Diego Garcia in 2002, that it had failed to ask if any
other rendition flights had passed through Diego Garcia, even if, as
the US asserted, no other planes landed there, and had also failed to
ask whether any other flights passed through UK territory en route to
engaging in “extraordinary rendition,” which would make the UK complicit
in the crime.

The British government faced a fresh
barrage of criticism just three days later, when the Foreign Affairs
Select Committee published its latest report (PDF)
on the Overseas Territories. With reference to Diego Garcia, the Committee
declared that “it is deplorable that previous US assurances about
rendition flights have turned out to be false. The failure of the United
States Administration to tell the truth resulted in the UK Government
inadvertently misleading our Select Committee and the House of Commons.
We intend to examine further the extent of UK supervision of US activities
on Diego Garcia, including all flights and ships serviced from Diego
Garcia.”

For good measure, the Committee also
had harsh words about the government’s treatment of the Chagossians,
noting, “We conclude that there is a strong moral case for the UK
permitting and supporting a return ” for the Chagossians. The FCO
(Foreign Office) has argued that such a return would be unsustainable,
but we find these arguments less than convincing.”

Under pressure on two fronts over Diego
Garcia, it remains to be seen whether the government can once more worm
its way out of trouble. Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the all-party
parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, is keen not to let this
happen. Speaking after the report was published, he chastised the foreign secretary for dismissing his concerns
about “extraordinary rendition” when he first raised the issue last
October. “The Foreign Secretary persistently gave me the brush-off.
He said we could rely on US assurances,” Tyrie said, adding, “My
allegations were correct. The Foreign Secretary’s brush-off was not
just misplaced, it was a disgrace.”

Reprieve was even more blunt, stating,
“This remains a transatlantic cover-up of epic proportions. While
the British government seems content to accept whatever nonsense it
is fed by its US allies, the sordid truth about Diego Garcia’s central
role in the unjust rendition and detention of prisoners in the so-called
“War on Terror” cannot be hidden forever.”

Andy is the author of The Guantanamo Files: The
Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press/the University of
Michigan Press).