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MoD 'concealing US rendition flights' Andrew Grice / London Independent | February 23 2006 The Government has been accused of hiding the extent of the use of British airspace and airports by CIA planes suspected of flying terrorist suspects to secret torture camps. The Ministry of Defence faces an investigation by the Parliamentary Ombudsman for refusing to disclose how many times US-registered planes associated with extraordinary rendition had used British airspace. The ministry refuses to answer parliamentary questions on the issue on the ground that the information is not recorded centrally and would incur a disproportionate cost to obtain. But the Liberal Democrats said yesterday
that this excuse had been "blown apart" by an admission by
the National Air Traffic Services (Nats) that three US planes had used
British airspace about 200 times in the past five years. Nick Clegg,
the party's foreign affairs spokesman, has written to the Armed Forces
minister, Adam Ingram, asking him to reconsider the Government's refusal
to disclose the planes' movements. He said it was "unacceptable"
that information could be revealed by Nats, now a privately owned company,
while MPs were not allowed to obtain it. He will call in the Ombudsman,
who investigates complaints of maladministration, unless the MoD comes
clean. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said he had no knowledge of
the 200 flights mentioned by Nats. He said: "We know of no occasion
where there has been a rendition through UK territory, or indeed over
UK territory, nor do we have any reason to believe that such flights
have taken place without our knowledge." ---------------------------------------------------
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