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Britain permitted CIA flights, admits Straw

Hasan Suroor

"Rendition" during Clinton presidency; call for probe

LONDON: For the first time since the row over CIA "rendition'' flights broke, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has admitted that Britain gave permission for two flights carrying prisoners to U.S. for trial to land in the U.K.

"This could be regarded as rendition,'' he said but added that it happened during the Clinton presidency.

Mr. Straw insisted that, according to government records, no such requests had been received from the Bush Administration. "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,'' he said.

Covert flights?

But Mr. Straw did not rule out that there had been no such flights saying that foreign planes "come and go all the time.''

Critics said his statement left open the possibility that the CIA might have covertly used British airspace to ferry alleged terror suspects to third countries where they might have been tortured. Mr. Straw's remarks fuelled calls for a probe into the affair. The Government was accused of evading the issue by pursuing a policy of "hear no evil, see no evil,'' as Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell put it.

"I do not doubt the good faith of the Foreign Secretary in this matter but because there are no records and because there are no requests doesn't mean to say that extraordinary rendition may not have been taking place,'' Mr. Campbell told the BBC. The civil rights group Liberty reiterated its threat to take the issue to court if the Government did not accept its demand for an investigation into allegations of Britain's "complicity'' in the affair.

Demanding a "proactive investigation rather than a file-check,'' Liberty's director Shami Chakrabarti said: "Few would be naïve enough to expect a foreign power to ask specific permission to use Britain for the shameful and shadowy business of kidnap and torture.''

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