07 Sep 2006

The UK government may be complicit in alleged torture practices if secret flights carrying suspects to CIA prisons transited UK airports, warned the human rights group Liberty. In an urgent letter to Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, the group demanded an investigation into allegations of "extraordinary rendition" flights entering UK airspace.

Liberty calls on UK Foreign Secretary to investigate "CIA torture flights" 

The warning came in response to US President Bush’s admission that secret CIA prisons exist and have yet to be shut down. Terror suspects were allegedly tortured in the secret detention sites abroad.  
 
Liberty Director Shami Chakrabarti said: 
 
"Over the last year we've been told that torture doesn't happen, that secret CIA flights have not entered the UK, and that there are no secret US prisons operating in the shadows of legality. 
  
With the US President's confession this house of cards has collapsed. The UK Government must come clean on allegations about its role in allowing these suspects to be transported through our territory on their route to hell." 
  
Liberty first alerted the then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in November 2005 of its fears that the UK is in breach of domestic and international law by allowing CIA "extraordinary rendition" flights to land and re-fuel in Britain. A dossier of this correspondence has been sent to Foreign Secretary Beckett and is available from the press office.
 
Contact: Jen Corlew on 020 7378 3656 or 07973 831 128 
 
 
NOTES TO EDITORS
 
1. On 6 September 2006 US President Bush acknowledged the existence of secret CIA prisons and said 14 key terrorist suspects have now been sent to Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. 
 
2. On 26 June 2006 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) passed a resolution calling on all member states, including the UK, to pressure the US into ending rendition flights, closing secret prisons and changing their own laws and practices to guarantee the rights of persons captured from, detained in or transported through their states. Eighteen members of the UK Parliament from all the main political parties are on the PACE. 
 
3. On 7 June 2006 the Council of Europe released a report which concluded that CIA flights carrying terror suspects likely to face torture have been given access to UK airspace and airports. 

4. On 26 May 2006, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights concluded that the Government was not doing enough to investigate whether UK airports are being used by secret CIA flights involved in the practice of extraordinary rendition. 
  
5. Liberty has called on the Government to support an amendment which would require the Secretary of State to force any suspicious aircraft in UK airspace to land and that plane to be searched. 
 
6. The Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee and the All Parliamentary Subject Group on Extraordinary Rendition are leading separate investigations into allegations of rendition flights. 
 
7. Liberty's call to action against extraordinary rendition is part of its "No torture, no compromise" campaign which seeks to make the UK government honour its positive obligation to stop torture and ill-treatment.
 
8. The Guardian newspaper revealed on 6 December and 12 September 2005 that airports in Biggin Hill, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Brize Norton, Farnborough, Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, RAF Mildenhall, Northolt, and Stansted have allowed CIA or CIA-chartered jets to land temporarily. These aircraft had flown into the UK approximately 210 times since 2001. ENDS///