Território britânico usado para a tortura dos E.U.
Por ADAM ZAGORIN | Quase dois anos passaram desde o presidente George W. Bush reconheceu publicamente a existência de um programa do CIA em que agência-alugou suspeitos do terrorismo da mosca do avião entre prisões e locais secretos da interrogação em torno do mundo. “Este programa ajudou-nos fazer exame de murderers maciços potenciais fora das ruas antes que tenham uma possibilidade para matar,” o presidente dito no Sept. 6, 2006. Desde essa admissão, a casa branca declinou elaborar ou comentar mais mais nos específicos do programa, embora os relatórios múltiplos aplainassem a respeito da existência de facilidades secretas em Poland e em Romania.
De acordo com um oficial americano sênior anterior, parece que um outro locale pode ser adicionado ao roster internacional de locais da interrogação - um mais obscuro e potencial mais controverso do que os locais alegados em Poland e em Romania. A fonte diz TEMPO que em 2002 e possivelmente em 2003, os ESTADOS UNIDOS. um imprisoned e interrogated ou mais suspeito do terrorismo em Diego Garcia, um console no Oceano Índico controlado pelo Reino Unido.
O oficial, um participant freqüente nas reuniões brancas do quarto da situação da casa após o Sept. 11 quem tem desde o governo esquerdo, diz um oficial do counterterrorism do CIA dito duas vezes que um prisioneiro ou uns prisioneiros high-value estavam prendidos e interrogated no console. A identidade do cativo ou dos cativos não foi feita claramente. De acordo com este cliente, o oficial do CIA surpreendeu participantes oferecendo a informação, para demonstrar aparentemente que a agência fazia seu mais melhor para obter a inteligência valiosa. De acordo com esta única fonte, que pediu o anonymity por causa da natureza classificada das discussões, os ESTADOS UNIDOS. podem também ter mantido prisioneiros em navios dentro das águas territoriais de Diego Garcia, uma disputa os ESTADOS UNIDOS. tem negado por muito tempo. As reuniões brancas da casa foram assistidas também por uma variedade de outros oficiais sênior do counterterrorism.
TEMPO discutiu o allegation com o Richard Clarke, que serviu como um conselheiro especial a Bush no conselho de segurança nacional que trata do counterterrorism até que 2003 mas não estejam a fonte para esta história. “Em minha presença, na casa branca, a possibilidade de usar Diego Garcia para deter alvos high-value foi discutida,” diz. Clarke did not witness a final resolution of the issue, but adds, “Given everything that we know about the Administration’s approach to the law on these matters, I find the report that the U.S. did use the island for detention or interrogation entirely credible.”
Since leaving the White House, Clarke has written Against All Enemies, a scathing critique of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war on terrorism. Clarke, who was in charge of U.S.-U.K. cooperation on Diego Garcia in the early ’90s, says using the island for interrogations or detentions without British permission “is a violation of U.K. law, as well as of the bilateral agreement governing the island.”
Diego Garcia is a tiny island, but its use by the U.S. as a detention or interrogation site has global significance. While the governments of Poland and Romania have faced few domestic consequences for their rumored cooperation with U.S. counterterrorism measures, many in Britain have been voluble in their opposition to what they see as the U.S.’s abrogation of human rights as well as violations of law and British sovereignty. Says the chief spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: “Our intelligence and counterterrorism relationship with the U.S. is vital to the national security of the United Kingdom. We accept U.S. assurances on rendition in good faith. But if others have definitive evidence of rendition through the U.K. or our overseas territories, including Diego Garcia, then we will raise it with the U.S. authorities.”
A CIA spokesman says there have been no changes in the agency’s position on Diego Garcia since February 2008, when CIA director Michael Hayden admitted that the agency’s previous denials about U.S. activities on the island were incorrect. Hayden acknowledged then that the U.S. had inadvertently misled the British government and that two suspects had been on flights that stopped to refuel on Diego Garcia en route to Guantánamo Bay and Morocco in 2002. “Neither of those individuals was ever part of CIA’s high-value terrorist-interrogation program,” said Hayden. “These were rendition operations, nothing more.” Hayden did not identify the suspects who were transited on the island and said that no other U.S. prisoners have been on Diego Garcia since Sept. 11.
A variety of press reports over the years have claimed otherwise, citing evidence that people ranging from alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to his associate Abu Zubaydah and other suspected terrorists were in American hands there. (Britain leased Diego Garcia, which is halfway between Africa and Southeast Asia, to the United States and barred anyone from entering the island, except by permit, in 1971.) In 2003, TIME reported that Hambali, alleged architect of the Bali discotheque bombings, was held there.
U.K. foreign secretary David Miliband and his predecessor, Jack Straw, who served under Prime Minister Tony Blair, have both repeatedly denied that the U.S. detained terrorism suspects on British territory.
Hayden’s attempt to set the record straight has failed to quiet British protests about American activities on the island. Instead, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition has begun an investigation, raising a variety of pointed questions about the island with Gordon Brown’s Labour government. Speaking to the BBC, Labor MP and Foreign Affairs Committee member Fabian Hamilton said this week, “I think it’s important the British government makes plain its … deep concern that it’s not being told the truth and that our territories are being used for these purposes.”
In late June, Foreign Secretary Miliband said the U.S. had studied a list of 391 flights compiled by British human rights groups and assured British authorities it had found that no further extraordinary-rendition flights had passed through British territory. But Hamilton’s committee insists that Britain can no longer take at face value America’s assurances that it is not torturing prisoners and, in a clear reference to Diego Garcia, says the U.K. now bears a “legal and moral obligation” to make certain that no British territory abets American rendition flights or interrogations.
Have Your Say: British Territory Used for US Torture
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