Britain admits island used for US rendition flights

BRITAIN’S relations with the US suffered a damaging blow yesterday as the government was forced to admit that two US “rendition” flights transporting terrorist suspects had landed on British soil.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown expressed his “disappointment” following the disclosure that two flights had refuelled on the British Indian Ocean island territory of Diego Garcia in 2002, despite years of denials.

Six years on, one of the suspects involved is still being held by the US at Guantanamo Bay.

“We have got to assure ourselves that these procedures will never happen again,” Brown told reporters in Brussels where he was holding talks with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Opposition parties warned the disclosures could undermine public trust in the “special relationship” with the US, while expressing concern that the two cases might only be the “tip of the iceberg”.

In the Commons, Foreign Secretary David Miliband told MPs that he was “very sorry indeed” that he had to “correct” statements made by the then prime minister Tony Blair and foreign secretary Jack Straw. Miliband said the flights had come to light as a result of recent investigations in the US, having previously been overlooked because of an “administrative error”. He had been told that neither individual had been held at a secret detention centre or been subjected to waterboarding or other forms of torture.