Britain’s ‘central & widespread’ role in CIA torture program exposed in damning report

Britain played a “central” role in the rendition, secret detention, and torture of prisoners by the CIA in the “War on Terror,” a journalistic inquiry claims.

Compiled by the Rendition Project and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the 400-page paper, entitled ‘CIA Torture Unredacted,’ dates back to July but has gone largely unreported since then.

The study’s authors say they managed to deliver “the most detailed public account to date of the CIA torture program.” Part of the account focused on the UK’s role in the disturbing practices which, it is claimed, was not insignificant.

Britain’s complicity was “widespread” and it played a pivotal role between 2001 and 2009 when the CIA established a global network of secret prisons, known as ‘black sites,’ according to the report.

… Britain’s role was central: supplying locational intelligence for capture operations; passing questions and intelligence for use in interrogations under torture; planning, financing and facilitating rendition operations…

The ‘black sites’ operated in several parts of the world and were launched after al-Qaeda staged the 9/11 attacks against the US. Terrorism suspects were held there “in secret” and “indefinitely." Washington later stood accused by human rights groups of interrogating prisoners at these sites using torture and other degrading forms of treatment.

The CIA Torture Unredacted report reveals how British territory was used by CIA aircraft as refueling stops during rendition operations. It was key in the rendition of at least 28 prisoners between secret jails, some of whom were subjected to torture, the investigation claims.

These include two prisoners acknowledged to have passed through the island of Diego Garcia (British territory in the Indian Ocean) in 2002. The report alleges these people were likely to have been Pakistani citizen Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni and Umar Faruq, a Kuwaiti national.

In addition to this, mainland Britain was also used to facilitate the rendition of ‘high value detainees’ to a secret detention location in Poland, including Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, all of whom were tortured at the site, according to the report.

Mohammed is a key suspect in orchestrating 9/11 and is being held at Guantanamo Bay where he is facing the death penalty. The September 2001 assault against the US was one of the world’s deadliest terrorist acts, killing and injuring thousands of people.

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