CIA prisoners Diplomatic Cover - questions to be asked - and hopefully, answered.

Liberty asked the Foreign Secretary in a letter dated 30th November (Press Release)

1. Liberty requested that he ask the US Government whether it has used British territory for the purposes of extraordinary rendition. Has he done this?

2. We asked him to investigate whether British territory has been so used. He appears to respond by saying that “no requests have been made” (to use airports to move CIA suspects).

3. Crucially, we asked him to seek an assurance from the US Government that in the future, neither it not its agents would use Britain for the purposes of extraordinary rendition. Has he done this?

To which the BBC report Jack Straw replying ;

"Careful research has been unable to identify any occasion... when we have received a request for permission by the United States for a rendition through the United Kingdom territory or airspace," Mr Straw told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"Our people have checked through all the detail of the Liberty suggestions.

"They have found no records which corroborate either the details of what Liberty say and no papers relating to any policy considerations of what Liberty say."

He said it was the practise of the US government to ask permission of the UK when it has sought such transfers in the past.

Two such requests were approved for flights taking suspects to the US for trial in 1998, under the Clinton administration, he said.

One cannot doubt that the mandarinate have been turning out drawers, scratching through waste paper bins, consulting files, dusty shelves and found nothing. Simply because there was nothing to find.

Of course no requests were made, because the CIA “rendered prisoners” had diplomatic cover afforded by the issue of diplomatic passports as revealed here 3/12 and here 4/12 and here 6/12

Late NewsApparently in Ministry of Defence and Transport answers, "if landing planes do not unload cargo or passengers, no record is kept of their contents or destination". - Perhaps it would be unrealistic to expect that the CIA would have a cargo manifest that would say.."2 prisoners for Cairo - purpose Torture". A list of passengers and passport details would surely be available?

Liberty have been in possession of this information directly for over a week and have neither sought confirmation or denial from the US our UK authorities, nor have any of the UK MSM media organisation.

Naturally one can understand a degree of scepticism about such a claim, in the absence of provable documents or testimony from named or identified individuals – but why is everyone so incurious ?

Of course if anyone HAS asked the question and the relevant authorities have denied it , I wish they would tell us all.

In the absence of any such information – I can only assume that the Bush administration changed procedures from the preceding Clinton Administration taking the advice of such smart ass lawyers like John Yoo.

It is evident to the meanest intellect that the CIA Airline in its many (dis)guises had a laissez passer (except notably never passing through France) to proceed as they wished. The prisoners were , simply an extension of the inviolable Diplomatic Bag.

Of course the Bromma airport incident in Sweden on December 18th 2001, is the most interesting of cases where approval was given because the lady (Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh) who gave the approval for the kidnapping was murdered in public nearly two years later (curiously she died on 11th September 2003 at about the time that details of the incident were surfacing publicly) – by a Kosovan hit man (Mijailo Mijailović he confessed in Jan 2004).

PS The official Swedish enquiry reported eventually …

“The element in the handling of the case which there is reason to examine more closely is the acceptance of the “guarantee” or the diplomatic assurances. According to the Government, the guarantee was a precondition for the decisions to expel the men to their homeland, Egypt. It comprised the exchange of aides-mémoire and what took place during a conversation between State Secretary Gun-Britt Andersson and a representative of Egypt.”

Which should give great encouragement to Hazel Blears as she negotiates her novel “assurances” with the democratic regimes to which we are so anxious to expel people, for whom we can find no reason to prosecute in this country but wish to eject for reasons unstated and unknown, or at least shrouded in a legal secrecy.

The Bromma incident which came hard on the heels of 9/11 exsposed the problem of meeting the needs of such forthright and honest Ministers as Anna Lindh - it was from this that the ruse of diplomatic cover by use of diplomatic passports followed.

Of course this may be all a load of tosh - and they just shovel these people around without any cover, without notifying Jack Straw - I doubt it.

Recent blogs on same topic here