Another US torture site

Diego Garcia is a small atoll in the Indian Ocean. Nominally part of the UK (who forcibly deported its native inhabitants), it is major US military base, and a major staging post in the war on terror. It is also a prime suspect for one of the CIA's black sites, torture centres where disappeared terrorist suspects are tortured. For the past two years, American officials (and their British glove-puppets) have been denying that the US has detained or interrogated prisoners on Diego Garcia. As usual, it turns out they were lying:

According to a former senior American official, it appears another locale can be added to the international roster of interrogation sites — one both more obscure and potentially more controversial than the alleged sites in Poland and Romania. The source tells TIME that, in 2002 and possibly 2003, the U.S. imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorist suspects on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean controlled by the United Kingdom.

The official, a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings after Sept. 11 who has since left government, says a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being held and interrogated on the island. The identity of the captive or captives was not made clear. According to this account, the CIA officer surprised attendees by volunteering the information, apparently to demonstrate that the agency was doing its best to obtain valuable intelligence. According to this single source, who requested anonymity because of the classified nature of the discussions, the U.S. may also have kept prisoners on ships within Diego Garcia's territorial waters, a contention the U.S. has long denied. The White House meetings were also attended by a variety of other senior counter-terrorism officials.

To point out the obvious, torture and disappearance are illegal under UK and EU law. And while it is under the day-to-day control of the US, those laws apply on Diego Garcia. The UK Parliament must investigate this, uncover the truth, and bring prosecutions against anyone found to have violated human rights in UK territory. And if they don't, they'll be punished for it at the ballot box.