Blair brushes aside report on UK's role in CIA flights

THE government yesterday brushed off an official report accusing Britain - and Scotland in particular - of complicity in US government operations that expose suspected terrorists to torture and abuse.

The Council of Europe report is the latest claim that the United States is operating a policy of extraordinary rendition, where Central Intelligence Agency staff fly suspects to friendly Middle Eastern countries where they are tortured for information.

At least one Scottish airport played a key role in a "global spider's web" of secret flights and undisclosed detention centres.

The Council of Europe, which has no links to the European Union, is the guardian of the European Convention on Human Rights, which obliges all signatory countries to respect basic freedoms.

Its investigation, led by Dick Marty, a Swiss parliamentarian, concludes that 14 European countries colluded in the rendition network, providing airbases and over-flight rights to CIA planes that may have been carrying detainees.

Previously published air traffic control records have shown that a number of aircraft owned by CIA front companies have frequently landed in the UK. The planes have landed at Scottish airports more than 100 times in recent years, the government admitted earlier this year.

Mr Marty's report yesterday highlighted the role of Prestwick airport, which recorded 37 landings between January 2001 and November 2005.

The airport is a "stopover point" in the rendition network, Mr Marty concluded, triggering calls in the Scottish Parliament for Jack McConnell, the First Minister, to investigate.

In the Commons, Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, questioned Tony Blair about the report.

The Prime Minister dismissed Mr Marty's report as "nothing new", though he repeated earlier assurances that the UK has no knowledge that the CIA flights are linked to torture.

Despite those remarks, government departments have admitted that they effectively operate a policy of "hear no evil, see no evil" on CIA flights: neither Ministry of Defence nor Department of Transport officials make any effort to investigate the contents of CIA-linked planes that call at British airports and airbases.

Much attention has focused on claims that the CIA operates secret detention centres in eastern European countries, and Mr Marty yesterday accused Poland and Romania of hosting such prison sites.

Both countries strongly deny the allegations, and even Mr Marty's report, based heavily on media reports and the work of human rights groups, produces no hard evidence.

But he adds: "Even if proof, in the classical meaning of the term, is not as yet available, a number of coherent and converging elements indicate that such secret detention centres did indeed exist in Europe."