Source: US Used UK Isle to Interrogate

[sabra]

Source: TIME Magazine

Almost two years have passed since President George W. Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of a CIA program in which agency-leased aircraft fly terrorism suspects between secret prisons and interrogation sites around the world. "This program has helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they have a chance to kill," the President said on Sept. 6, 2006. Since that admission, the White House has declined to elaborate or comment further on the program's specifics, although multiple reports have surfaced regarding the existence of secret facilities in Poland and Romania.

According to a former senior American official, it appears another locale can be added to the international roster of interrogation sites — one both more obscure and potentially more controversial than the alleged sites in Poland and Romania. The source tells TIME that in 2002 and possibly 2003, the U.S. imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorism suspects on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean controlled by the United Kingdom.

The official, a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings after Sept. 11 who has since left government, says a CIA counterterrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being held and interrogated on the island. The identity of the captive or captives was not made clear. According to this account, the CIA officer surprised attendees by volunteering the information, apparently to demonstrate that the agency was doing its best to obtain valuable intelligence. According to this single source, who requested anonymity because of the classified nature of the discussions, the U.S. may also have kept prisoners on ships within Diego Garcia's territorial waters, a contention the U.S. has long denied. The White House meetings were also attended by a variety of other senior counterterrorism officials.

TIME discussed the allegation with Richard Clarke, who served as a special adviser to Bush on the National Security Council dealing with counterterrorism until 2003 but is not the source for this story. "In my presence, in the White House, the possibility of using Diego Garcia for detaining high-value targets was discussed," he says. 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."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1828469,00.html

[maddezmom]

1. kick

[struggle4progress]

2. US 'held suspects on British territory in 2006'

Source: The Observer (UK)

Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
The Observer,
Sunday August 3 2008

Terrorist suspects were held by the United States on the British territory of Diego Garcia as recently as 2006, according to senior intelligence sources. The claims, which undermine Foreign Office denials that the archipelago in the Indian Ocean has been used as a so-called 'black site' to facilitate extraordinary rendition, threaten to cause a diplomatic incident.

The government has repeatedly accepted US assurances that Diego Garcia has not been used to hold high-ranking members of al-Qaeda who have been flown to secret interrogation centres around the world in 'ghost' planes hired by the CIA. Interrogation techniques used on suspects are said to include 'waterboarding', a simulated drowning that Amnesty International claims is a form of torture. But now the government's denials over Diego Garcia's role in extraordinary rendition are crumbling. Senior American intelligence sources have claimed that the US has been holding terrorist suspects on the British territory as recently as two years ago.

The former intelligence officers unofficially told senior Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón that Mustafa Setmarian, a Spanish-based Syrian accused of running terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, was taken to Diego Garcia in late 2005 and held there for months. The Spanish are trying to locate and arrest Setmarian for separate terrorist offences.

It is thought that more than 10 high-ranking detainees have been held on Diego Garcia or on a US navy vessel within its harbour since 2002. The suggestion, if true, is acutely embarrassing for the British government which has admitted only that planes carrying al-Qaeda suspects landed on Diego Garcia on two occasions in 2002 ...

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/03/terrorism.usforeignpolicy

---

2006 seems to be three or four years more than confirmed by the recent TIME story and at least a year more than alleged by any prior investigative reports:

Related LBN thread (Friday) on TIME story:
Source: US Used UK Isle to Interrogate
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=3420029

US used Diego Garcia for terrorism probe: Time
August 2nd, 2008 - 8:59 pm ICT by IAN

New York, Aug 2 (IANS) The US imprisoned and interrogated some terrorism suspects in 2002 and possibly 2003 on Diego Garcia, an island under British control in the Indian Ocean, Time magazine reported quoting a former US official. According to the official, a “CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being held and interrogated on the island”, wrote Time, but said the identity of the captive or captives was not made clear ...

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/us-used-diego-garcia-for-terrorism-probe-time_10079208.html

US official reveals terror prison on Diego Garcia
Saturday August 2 2008 00:52 IST
Damien McElroy

... Clive Stafford-Smith, a leading human rights lawyer, said David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, had allowed himself to be "duped on a colossal scale" by America, which earlier this year conceded it had misled London on access to the island for rendition flights - aircraft involved in extra-judicial extradition of terrorist suspects.

A Foreign Office spokesman said Britain was powerless to accept American reassurances at anything other than face value. The priority placed on preserving access to US intelligence constrained the government's ability to question US statements ...

Time magazine reported that a former US official with frequent access to the White House situation room had said America had held one or more "high value" al-Qa'eda suspects at Diego Garcia in 2001 and 2002 ...

Michael Hayden, the head of the CIA, admitted the US had lied about rendition flights in February but he said "nothing more" had happened on the island. As the home of a fleet of B2 bombers, Diego Garcia airbase plays a vital offensive role in the War on Terror. Protected by a continental shelf, it is remote and inaccessible ...

http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEL20080801143126&Page=L&Title=World&Topic=0

Secret Prison on Diego Garcia Confirmed: Six “High-Value” Guantánamo Prisoners Held, Plus “Ghost Prisoner” Mustafa Setmariam Nasar
Saturday, August 02, 2008 08:08:12 AM

... This is not the first time that TIME has exposed the existence of a secret prison on Diego Garcia. In 2003, the magazine broke the story that Hambali, one of 14 “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, was being held there, and in the years since confirmation has also come from other sources. Twice, in 2004 and 2006, Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general, who is now professor of international security studies at the West Point military academy, revealed the prison’s existence.

In May 2004, he blithely declared on MSNBC’s Deborah Norville Tonight, “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 spoke out again, saying, in an NPR interview with Robert Siegel, “They’re behind bars … we’ve got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram air field, in Guantánamo.”

The prison’s existence was also confirmed by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who produced a detailed report on “extraordinary rendition” for the Council of Europe in June 2007 (PDF) and by Manfred Novak, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, in March this year. Having spoken to senior CIA officers during his research, Marty told the European Parliament, “We have 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,” and Manfred Novak explained to the Observer that “he had received credible evidence from well-placed sources familiar with the situation on the island that detainees were held on Diego Garcia between 2002 and 2003.”
The penultimate piece of the jigsaw puzzle came in May, when El Pais broke the story that “ghost prisoner” Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, whose current whereabouts are unknown, was imprisoned on the island in 2005, shortly after his capture in Pakistan — although the English-speaking press failed to notice ...

http://www.mindanaoexaminer.com/news.php?news_id=20080801190812

[melody]

3. In other words, Blair conspired with the Bush administration and now the UK rw is ducking for cover

Yeah, it was ALL THEIR FAULT, those evil people!

[struggle4progress]

4. Maybe more like, "I weren't the captain & I ain't goin down with that ship"

[melody]

5. It's time for the international brotherhood of fascists to own up to it

I'm sick of the US constantly getting all the blame. The globalists have no countrymen but each other.
They're at the helm of this, not an individual nation state.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Thank you for taking the time to post these links. It's all monstrous, unspeakable.

Will we ever be capable of turning away from this astonishing leap to barbarity we've had with Republican pResidents, now that they've broken the seal on criminality, and made it conventional, even "patriotic?"





Diego Garcia

[PurityOfEssence]

7. Aw, come on; why not Jersey?

They could get Joe Pesci with a cricket bat and tie 'em up with squash balls in their mouths...