British members of parliament (MPs) and human rights groups on Sunday demanded an independent inquiry into the use of UK territory by CIA "torture flights" as fresh questions emerged over the British government's handling of the issue.
Ministers are coming under growing pressure as officials made it clear they still could not be certain of the extent to which US aircraft made use of British facilities when taking alleged terrorists to prisons where they were likely to be subjected to inhuman treatment.
Last month, Britsish Foreign Secretary David Miliband apologized to MPs, admitting that contrary to "earlier explicit assurances" two flights had landed at Diego Garcia, the British Indian Ocean territory where the US has a large airbase. He said the flights had refueled there and each had had a single detainee on board who did not leave the aircraft.
British and US officials have refused to give details about the two detainees other than that one was in Guantanamo Bay and the other had been released. Miliband said he had asked his officials for a list of all flights on which rendition had been alleged.
British officials said on Sunday they were "working behind the scenes" in an attempt to get more information from the US. It is understood that Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch Brown has spoken to Manfred Novak, the UN's special investigator on torture, about the alleged use of Diego Garcia as a detention center to hold US suspects.
Novak said he had credible evidence from sources he could not reveal that detainees were held on the island between 2002 and 2003. British officials say they have no evidence of this. Some representatives of human rights groups who met British foreign office officials suggested records of the CIA flights may have been destroyed.
Flight plan records show that one of the aircraft, registered N379P, flew in September 2002 from Diego Garcia to Morocco. From there it flew to Portugal and then to Kabul. Passenger names have been blacked out.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS