US torture on UK territory claim

[struggle4progress]

<snip>
Mr Brake called for reassurance the base was not being used "to secretly hold and interrogate terror suspects".
<snip>

"There are claims that prisoners are being held there by the Americans for so-called 'rendering' which other people have described as torturing, at least holding and questioning before being transferred to Camp X-Ray," he said.

Earlier in a statement Mr Brake said there was a "huge question mark" over the use of the facility and he called on the government to reassure the public it was not being used for holding and interrogating prisoners.
<snip>

"After the recent prisoner abuse scandals in Iraq and Camp X-Ray, the British people have the right to know whether suspects in Bush's War on Terror are being held on British soil."
<more>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3873291.stm


Britain and Mauritius in diplomatic stand-off over Diego Garcia
By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
08 July 2004

A diplomatic row that prompted Mauritius to threaten to withdraw from the Commonwealth deepened yesterday after Britain barred the country from going to court to seek the return of a strategic Indian Ocean archipelago.

Bill Rammell, the Foreign Office minister, advised parliament that the Government was extending a rule, which prevents Commonwealth countries from suing Britain through the international court of justice, to cover even former Commonwealth members.

Mauritius has been threatening to leave the Commonwealth so that it can press its longstanding claim to the Chagos islands. The archipelago includes Diego Garcia, where the United States has strategic military bases. "Though these changes are of general application, their immediate significance is that they prevent any Commonwealth country from circumventing the present limitations by withdrawing from the Commonwealth and then instituting proceedings against the United Kingdom in respect of an existing dispute," Mr Rammell said.
<snip>

Mr Rammell yesterday strongly defended a controversial order which had barred islanders from returning to the Indian Ocean archipelago, saying it was dictated by financial and legal considerations. The government decision overturned a High Court ruling which said the islanders' eviction was illegal.
<snip>

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=539103


Diego Garcia: Paradise Isle or Britain's shame?
By Linda S. Heard
July 7, 2004

<snip>
After kicking out the island's 2000 inhabitants - described by a British diplomat at the time as being "man Fridays" and "Tarzans" - during the late 1960s and early 70s, Britain leased it to the United States military as a permanent base in return for a discounted American-manufactured Polaris! nuclear weapons system.

Known as Ilois, the islanders were spirited away in boats and literally dumped on the shores of Mauritius, where they were abandoned to sort out their own accommodation and means of earning a living. Approximately 500 of the original exiles are still alive, and still struggling even to subsist as strangers in a foreign land.

Some four years ago a British High Court judgment afforded the islanders the right of return but not only were they barred from doing so by an unprecedented executive order issued by the Blair government last month, they were further forbidden from settling on one of Diego Garcia's neighbouring islands.
<snip>

The question being asked is whether a newly built camp, known as "Camp Justice" on the leased island is the Indian Ocean's Guantanamo, where high profile detainees are being held without access to family members, lawyers and human rights groups.
<snip>

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/July/7o/Diego%20Garcia%20Paradise%20Isle%20or%20Britain's%20shame%20By%20Linda%20S.%20Heard.htm

[burrowowl]

1. OOOO!

The U$ will not like losing that base.

[struggle4progress]

2. I don't think the Bushistas intend to relinquish it. eom