Diego Garcia: Come For The Pristine Blue Water, Stay For The Waterboarding « The Washington Independent
Jul 31, 2020329 Shares164.3K Views
Not to be a partypooper, but even Time admits that its revelation about the CIA using the British naval base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to torture dudesisn’t particularly revelatory. For one thing, Diego Garcia has been mentioned for years — by the UN special rapporteur for torture, as well as others— as a likely spot for CIA torture. For another, the Guardian has been all over this lately. For a third thing, Time’s source is a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings after Sept. 11 who has since left government,” so take from that what you will.
But, still, coaxing even a hint of confirmation from an ex-official about Diego Garcia is arduous, so hold your head up high, Adam Zagorin. I particularly like CIA’s acknowledgement that it had lied to the British about using the base:
“„A CIA spokesman says there have been no changes in the agency’s position on Diego Garcia since February 2008, when CIA director Michael Hayden admitted that the agency’s previous denials about U.S. activities on the island were incorrect. Hayden acknowledged then that the U.S. had inadvertently misled the British government and that two suspects had been on flights that stopped to refuel on Diego Garcia en route to Guantánamo Bay and Morocco in 2002. “Neither of those individuals was ever part of CIA’s high-value terrorist interrogation program,” said Hayden. “These were rendition operations, nothing more.” Hayden did not identify the suspects who transited on the island and said that no other U.S. prisoners have been on Diego Garcia since Sept. 11.
“„“The US and the UK must at last come clean about the scope of extraordinary rendition and secret detention—a violation of American and British law, human rights standards, and the rules and regulations of NATO,” stated Frank Donaghue, Chief Executive Officer of PHR. “Both Congress and Parliament must set the record straight about what happened at Diego Garcia. PHR knows from our twenty-one year history of documenting torture around the world that secret detention opens the floodgates to torture and other gross human rights abuses.”
Hajra Shannon
Reviewer
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