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British Gvt: “Convention Against Torture Does NOT Apply on Diego Garcia” — New Links to MH-370

Diego Garcia: Footprint of Freedom or Footprint to Disappearances?

While the U.S. has vehemently refuted new claims that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 landed on Diego Garcia island south of the Maldives in the Central Indian Ocean, new information along with charity organization Reprieve’s previous research shows a sordid history of secret, unrecorded flights to the island, lies about them, torture there, and the British Government’s direct involvement there with the United States, its CIA and military.

“More than one independent source has suggested logs of flights through Diego Garcia have been destroyed. However, an examination of records available for four other rendition flights conducted by the same plane (N379P) reveals it routinely operated under various ‘special status designators’ allowing them to fly wherever they liked, whenever they liked, indicating knowledge – and authorisation – at the highest echelons of both US and British governments.” – Reprieve (emphasis added)

After Flight MH370′s disappearance on March 8, military failures to follow standard operating procedures, increased difficulties in searching for the jetliner, new reports say. This failure spurred theories of what happened, a primary one being involvement of Diego Garcia.

A spokesman for the U.S. embassy based in Malaysia, however, has denied such claims this week, The Mirror reported.

“There was no indication that MH370 flew anywhere near Maldives or Diego Garcia,” the spokesman said.

Of course, that’s not what Maldives islanders say, nor what some radar analysts say. But then, Diego Garcia spokesmen have a bad habit of lying, according to old and new evidence that has surfaced this week.

The “spokesman,” another in the long line of unnamed MH370 sources, said the missing jetliner “did not land in Diego Garcia.” U.S authorities are working with Malaysia and Australia and other countries striving hard to locate Malaysian Flight MH370 based on areas identified by Malaysian and other international aviation officials, the mystery spokesman said.

To believe or not to believe Diego Garcia spokesman

Diego Garcia’s tragic history is based on blatant lies, cruelty and cover ups, as further exposed since MH370 supposedly “disappeared.”

Friday, more of Diego Garcia’s sordid past and cover-up were exposed, thanks to UK charity Reprieve and a US Senate report that surfaced. The report indicates the British government has been “far more than complicit” in military abuses at the Diego Garcia black site, where detained suspects rendered (kidnapped) have been taken for “interrogation” (torture).

Prisoners known to be taken to Diego Garcia’s for abuses include: Mustafa Setmarium Naser and Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni, according to Reprieve.

Britain leased the entire island to the US to use for black operations. Before the US took control of the island, the Brits deprived 4000 Diego Garcia residents of food, gassed their pets, placed the islanders on boats without their belongings, and dumped them in a slum over 1,000 miles away, where to this day, they struggle to survive.

“What did [the British military] get for their cooperation?” Before Its News contributor Tom Dennen asks. A deal on Polaris missiles.”

“The Convention Against Torture does not apply on Diego Garcia” – British Government, cited by Reprieve in Ghost Detention On Diego Garcia.

Suspicions first arose in an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair on Dec. 28 2002, in which Human Rights Watch suggested US forces were holding and interrogating “Al Qaeda suspects” on Diego Garcia, violating international law and legal obligations of the British government, according to Reprieve.

“In a subsequent series of questions and answers in Parliament between 2003 until 2008, the government consistently denied the allegations.” [See: Ghost Detention On Diego Garcia, Reprieve]

In October 2003, Time Magazine cited records from the interrogation of US prisoner Hambali, reportedly conducted on the island. Respected international investigators at the Council of Europe and the United Nations expressed similar suspicions. The US officials then made seemingly careless public statements confirming the use of Diego Garcia for secret detentions.

The British government, in response, consistently referred to US assurances to the contrary, suggesting limited British presence on, and responsibility for, the island.

In fact, however, the UK has a significant military and administrative presence on Diego Garcia, that has its own independent administration run by the East Africa Desk of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.

The 1966 Anglo-American Agreement specifies that British authorities retain ‘exclusive jurisdiction over members of the United States forces with respect to offences, including offences relating to security, punishable by law in force in the territory but not by the law of the United States’.

After years of US and UK officials lying, finally, on Feb. 21 2008, then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband conceded by statement to Parliament and by letter to Clive Stafford Smith, head of Reprieve, that two rendition flights carrying US prisoners had stopped on Diego Garcia, in Jan. and Sept. 2002.

The correspondence claimed “an error in the earlier US records search meant that these cases did not come to light.”

By process of elimination, Reprieve identified one prisoner rendered through Diego Garcia as Egyptian national Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni.

“His case shows how the US secret prison system grew out of existing practices with partner states, such as Egypt, aided by cooperating states, like Britain,” Reprieve says.

“It is, therefore, inconceivable that the UK was not aware of how the existing US rendition programme accelerated and broadened following 9/11.”

Excluding renditions from Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay, at least 150-200 renditions occurred between 2001 and 2004, and in the lead-up to Madni’s apprehension, the press reported at least five high-profile rendition cases.

More significantly, by law the UK must be informed of all movements of US ships and aircraft on or through Diego Garcia, and the US requires British permission to bring “unlawful combatants” onto the island.”

Was Prince William, therefore, informed MH370 passengers would be taken to Diego Garcia, thus explaining his surprise arrival in the Maldives the day the plane went missing and his disappearance after his 4-7 day supposed romantic holiday in the Maldives, for three weeks, supposedly on an “Asia Pacific tour”?
No Asian or Pacific nation official or media reported his visiting them at that time.

According to the George Bush and Barack Obama administrations, anyone, anywhere, for any reason can be deemed an “unlawful combatant.” This is a primary reason for widespread speculation that the US is directly involved in the missing 239 people who boarded Flight 370 and that Diego Garcia is also involved.

“More than one independent source has suggested logs of flights through Diego Garcia have been destroyed,” says Reprieve. ”However, an examination of records available for four other rendition flights conducted by the same plane (N379P) reveals that it routinely operated under various “special status designators” allowing them to fly wherever they liked, whenever they liked, which would indicate knowledge – and authorisation – at the highest echelons of both the US and the British governments.

“Crucially, flights can only be granted this special status when ‘specifically authorised by the relevant national authority’, indicating a significant degree of British complicity,” Reprieve states.

Jeppesen Dataplan, a subsidiary of Boeing that provided flight-planning and logisitcal support in the transfer of prisoners, might have filed false flight logs for N379P. Such falsification involved not only Jeppesen, but also a state party, in this case the UK.

It has also been exposed by Deborah Dupré that the U.S. National Security Agency was targeting Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE. A special operation has been under way called Operation Shotgiant, specifically targeting them for “national security” issues, as Edward Snowden documents revealed.

Both Huawei and ZTE, major telecommunications companies, had top experts board MH370. Operation Shotgiant was to find links between Huawei, the Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army.

Congress and media has identified Huawei as a national security threat to the US – on account of its unproven hacking activities with respect to US networks. The US began using a back door to hack the Chinese, doing the same to Chinese networks – and possibly much more.

“If it is true, the irony is that what they are doing to us is exactly what they have always charged the Chinese are doing through us…” said William B. Plummer, Huawei’s vice president of external affairs, in an email to The Associated Press.

Huawei produces many electronic products, including cutting edge network equipment, such as WLAN routers and fiber optic hardware. For America’s NSA, that craves total domination in global cyberspace, and for the Pentagon, that craves Full Spectrum Dominance of the world, full control over these technologies is decisive.

Awful truth about Brits participation in kidnapping innocent people and worse

Thursday, a report based on leaked accounts of a US Senate investigation into the CIA’s kidnap and torture programme after 9/11, contradicts years of British government denials that it allowed the US to use Diego Garcia for its “extraordinary rendition” torture programme.

The Diego Garcia black site held “high-value” detainees with the “full co-operation” of the British government, according to Al Jazeera America, quoting US officials familiar with the Senate report.

By Thursday night, UK Minister of Parliament William Hague, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs since 2010, was facing urgent demands from international and British lawyers representing CIA “extraordinary rendition” programme victims to clarify the new allegations.

“We need to know immediately whether ministers misled Parliament over CIA torture on British soil,” said Cori Crider, Reprieve’s strategic director.

“If the CIA operated a black site on Diego Garcia, then a string of official statements, from both this and the last government, were totally false. Were ministers asleep at the wheel? Or, as the report suggests, have we been lied to for years?”

New details could be confirmed within weeks after the US Senate voted last week to declassify a 500-page summary of its three-year investigation into the CIA’s kidnap-torture programe.

This involves examining some six million classified documents. Whether or not any of those will shed more light on the ghost MH370 flight remains unknown. It is justifiably speculated that they will.

“The almost total absence of flight logs for suspicious flights through Diego Garcia suggests similar falsification has occurred,” says Repreive.

“As Mr Madni’s case unfolds, many more questions are raised than answered about Britain’s role in US detentions, with claims to ignorance increasingly difficult to accept.

“It is time for the UK government to reveal precisely who else has been held on and rendered through Diego Garcia, what happened to them there, and where they are now.”


By Deborah Dupre, Before it’s News; | Related: DG History; | Photo Copyright: Robert M. Rossman;
Contact Deborah via email at [email protected] or Twitter @DeborahDupr.