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31Jan15

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CIA interrogated terrorism suspects on UK territory - report

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The CIA interrogated terrorism suspects in the wake of the 9/11 attacks at the remote British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, a senior Bush administration official has told in an interview with Vice News.

The tropical island was used as a transit site for the US government's "nefarious activities" post-9/11 when other places were too full, dangerous, insecure, or unavailable, Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, said.

"So you might have a case where you simply go in and use a facility at Diego Garcia for a month or two weeks or whatever and you do your nefarious activities there," Wilkerson said.

"No one has indicated there was a detention site there, not in so many words," Wilkerson said. "What they indicated is that interrogations took place there," he added.

Wilkerson cited four well-placed CIA and intelligence sources and a member of the Intelligence and Research Bureau at the State Department who was "very much plugged in to what was going on at the CIA."

In 2008, the UK government acknowledged that the US used the base in Diego Garcia as a location for transporting terrorism suspects. However, London and Washington have maintained that no interrogations and tortures were carried out on the island.

In early December, US Senate Intelligence Committee report detailed the CIA use of torture during the interrogation of terrorism suspects in the years following the 9/11 attacks on the US. It exposed the European countries' complicity in the crimes of the US intelligence.

Secret sites are believed to have existed in Lithuania, Poland and Romania, while other governments including in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia allegedly facilitated these operations.

[Source: Itar Tass, London, 31Jan15]

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