FCO has been briefing journalists in the last few minutes: here’s the Times –
David Miliband is expected to apologise to the Commons today as he discloses that two American “extraordinary rendition” flights did, after all, land on British soil.
The Government has always insisted that there was no evidence that such flights had occurred, but ministers have recently received information from Washington that two flights – one en route to Guantanamo Bay and one to Morocco – stopped over at Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean.
The Foreign Secretary is expected to say that the Government did not know of the flights at the time it assured MPs that none had taken place and that efforts are under way that it never happens again.
Miliband is making a statement to the House now – watch it live here. More to follow.
Update: the BBC says both flights landed in 2002. And The Times has now added this:
Campaigners pointed out that when any such flight had landed on British soil it came under British jurisdiction. In late November Jack Straw, the then Foreign Secretary, wrote to the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to ask for clarification on the purpose of some 80 flights that were known to have passed through the UK.
Downing Street denied that UK airports had been used for rendition flights “so far as we are aware”. Questioned by the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs on December 13, Mr Straw denied that any CIA flights carrying prisoners abroad had passed through British airfields.
He dismissed suggestions that a judicial investigation should be launched into reports that over 400 CIA flights have flown in and out of Britain since September 2001, saying the world should accept the “serious assurance” of the United States that it was not transferring prisoners abroad to be tortured.
To which the obvious rejoinder – assuming that the British government really did know nothing about UK airports being used for rendition flights – is: with allies like these…
The Guardian has just added that “Miliband said he had expressed his “deep disappointment” to the US government that the nature of the flights had not been revealed earlier”. Too bloody right.
