Terrorism in the British Indian Ocean Territory

Last updated

The British Indian Ocean Territory, sometimes known as the Chagos Archipelago has had many threats of occupation by various groups, especially since the Depopulation of Chagossians from the Chagos Archipelago, [1] as well as being a joint UK-US facility that is used in countering terrorism. The UK maintains that there is a low risk of terrorism in this territory. [2]

"Secret" Prison

A map of military installations on Diego Garcia in 2002 Diego Garcia Island Map.jpg
A map of military installations on Diego Garcia in 2002

In 2008 it was exposed in TIME [3] magazine by Lawrence Wilkerson that a secret War on Terror prison had existed on the island of Diego Garcia from 2002 to 2006. He claimed that Diego Garcia was used by the CIA for "nefarious activities". He said that he had heard from three US intelligence sources that Diego Garcia was used as "a transit site where people were temporarily housed, let us say, and interrogated from time to time" and, "What I heard was more along the lines of using it as a transit location when perhaps other places were full or other places were deemed too dangerous or insecure, or unavailable at the moment". [4] [5]

In June 2004, the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw stated that United States authorities had repeatedly assured him that no detainees had passed in transit through Diego Garcia or were disembarked there. [6]

Diego Garcia was first rumoured to have been one of the locations of the CIA's black sites in 2005. [7] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one of the "high-value detainees" suspected to have been held in Diego Garcia. [8] In October 2007, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the British Parliament announced that it would launch an investigation of continued allegations of a prison camp on Diego Garcia, which it claimed were twice confirmed by comments made by retired United States Army General Barry McCaffrey. [9] On 31 July 2008, an unnamed former White House official alleged that the United States had imprisoned and interrogated at least one suspect on Diego Garcia during 2002 and possibly 2003. [10]

The existence of the site was confirmed by US general Barry McCaffrey, and Swiss Senator Dick Marty. [11] Also, Manfred Nowak, one of five of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, says that credible evidence exists supporting allegations that ships serving as black sites have used Diego Garcia as a base. [12] The human rights group Reprieve alleges that United States-operated ships moored outside the territorial waters of Diego Garcia were used to incarcerate and torture detainees. [13]

Inmates included Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, and Riduan Isamuddin was held there before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The United Kingdoms government, who leased the island to the US, denied any knowledge of the incident, saying that two prisoners had passed through Diego Garcia but the plane they were on had only stopped to refuel. Nasar's location is still unknown since his arrival on Diego Garcia was announced in Spanish newspaper El Pais . [14]

On December 9, 2014, the United States Senate Intelligence Committee published a 600-page unclassified summary of its 6,700 page secret report on the CIA's abuse of its secret prisoners.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

Abu Zubaydah Saudi Arabian Guantanamo detainee

Abu Zubaydah is a Saudi Arabian Mujahid currently held by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He is held under the authority of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF).

Diego Garcia British-held atoll in the Indian Ocean

Diego Garcia is an island of the British Indian Ocean Territory, a disputed overseas territory of the United Kingdom. It is a militarised atoll just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, and the largest of 60 small islands comprising the Chagos Archipelago. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to find it and it was then settled by the French in the 1790s and transferred to British rule after the Napoleonic Wars. It was one of the "Dependencies" of the British Colony of Mauritius until the Chagos Islands were detached for inclusion in the newly created British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) in 1965.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Pakistani member of al-Qaeda (born 1964)

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is an Islamist militant held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-related charges. He was named as "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse 2004 American military scandal during the Iraq War

During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the CIA committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents caused shock and outrage, receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.

Mustafa al-Hawsawi Saudi Arabian terrorist most dangerous

Mustafa al-Hawsawi is a Saudi Arabian citizen. He is alleged to have acted as a key financial facilitator for the September 11 attacks in the United States.

Extraordinary rendition State-sponsored abduction and transfer to a third country

Extraordinary rendition is state-sponsored "forcible abduction in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state". The phrase usually refers to the United States-led program of extraordinary rendition during the War on Terror, which had the purpose of circumventing the source country's laws on interrogation, detention, extradition and/or torture. Extraordinary rendition is a type of extraterritorial abduction, but not all extraterritorial abductions include transfer to a third country.

Moazzam Begg British Pakistani formerly held in Guantanamo Bay

Moazzam Begg is a British Pakistani who was held in extrajudicial detention by the US government in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility and the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, in Cuba, for nearly three years. Seized by Pakistani intelligence at his home in Pakistan in February 2002, he was transferred to the custody of US Army officers, who held him in the detention centre at Bagram, Afghanistan, before transferring him to Guantanamo Bay, where he was held until January 2005.

Binyam Mohamed Ethiopian Guantanamo detainee

Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, also referred to as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam Mohammed or Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi, is an Ethiopian national and United Kingdom resident, who was detained as a suspected enemy combatant by the US Government in Guantanamo Bay prison between 2004 and 2009 without charges. He was arrested in Pakistan and transported first to Morocco under the US's extraordinary rendition program, where he claimed to have been interrogated under torture.

Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the U.S. government is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies. Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the CIA was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide.

Mohamad Farik Amin

Mohd Farik Bin Amin, alias Zubair Zaid, is a Malaysian who is alleged to be a senior member of Jemaah Islamiyah and al Qaeda. He is currently in American custody in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He is one of the 14 detainees who had previously been held for years at CIA black sites. He is currently awaiting trial in a military commission. In the ODNI biographies of those 14, Amin is described as a direct subordinate of Hambali. Farik Amin is also a cousin of well-known Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli Abdhir.

Hassan bin Attash

Hassan Mohammed Ali bin Attash is a citizen of Saudi Arabia, held by the United States in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts estimate that bin Attash was born in 1985, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Guantanamo Bay detention camp United States military prison in southeastern Cuba

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo, on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Of the roughly 780 people detained there since January 2002 when the military prison first opened after the September 11 attacks, 733 have been transferred elsewhere, 37 remain there, and 9 have died while in custody.

Rashid Rauf was an alleged Al-Qaeda operative. He was a dual citizen of Britain and Pakistan who was arrested in Bhawalpur, Pakistan in connection with the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot in August 2006, a day before some arrests were made in Britain. The Pakistani Interior Minister, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, claimed that "he is an al Qaeda operative with linkages in Afghanistan". He was identified as one of the ringleaders of the alleged plot. In December 2006, the anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi found no evidence that he had been involved in terrorist activities, and his charges were downgraded to forgery and possession of explosives. A 2022 article offers an assessment of the impact of Operation Overt and refers to Rauf's alleged role

Majid Shoukat Khan is a Pakistani detainee who is the only known legal resident of the United States held in the Guantanamo Bay Detainment Camp. He was detained after returning to his native Pakistan to visit his wife and was captured by Pakistani authorities, who handed him over to the CIA. In 2012, Khan pled guilty to conspiracy and the murder of 11 innocent civilians in the 2003 Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta, Indonesia, and for the attempted assassination of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

Torture in the United States includes documented and alleged cases of torture both inside and outside the United States by members of the government, the military, law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, health care services, and other public organizations.

Abdu Ali al Haji Sharqawi Yemeni alleged Al-Qaeda associate (born 1974)

Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj, also known as Riyadh the Facilitator, is a Yemeni alleged Al-Qaeda associate who is currently being held in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.

"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" is a euphemism for the program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world, including Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bucharest authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white torture". Several detainees endured medically unnecessary "rectal rehydration", "rectal fluid resuscitation", and "rectal feeding". In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.

Tariq Mahmood is a British Pakistani man who was captured in Islamabad by Pakistani security forces in October 2003. His family reports that Tariq was tortured, while in Pakistani custody, with the knowledge or cooperation of UK and American security officials.

Camp Thunder Cove

Camp Thunder Cove, formerly Camp Justice is a United States Navy and Air Forces support facility within the US-UK Naval Support Facility on Diego Garcia, a small and isolated island in the Indian Ocean. The island is in the Chagos Archipelago, part of the British Indian Ocean Territory.

CIA black sites Secret headquarters used by the CIA

CIA black sites refer to the black sites that are controlled by the CIA and used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain enemy combatants.

References

  1. ↑ Bowcott, Owen (17 November 2016). "Mauritius threatens to take Chagos Islands row to UN court" – via The Guardian.
  2. ↑ "Terrorism - British Indian Ocean Territory travel advice - GOV.UK". www.gov.uk.
  3. ↑ Zagorin, Adam (31 July 2008). "Source: US Used UK Isle for Interrogations" – via content.time.com.
  4. ↑ Cobain, Ian (30 January 2015). "CIA interrogated suspects on Diego Garcia, says Colin Powell aide". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 February 2015.
  5. ↑ "Terror suspects were interrogated on Diego Garcia, US official admits". Daily Telegraph. Press Association. 30 January 2015. Retrieved 27 February 2015.
  6. ↑ "Written Answers to Questions 21 June 2004". Hansard House of Commons Daily Debates. UK Parliament. 422 (part 605). Retrieved 2008-02-21.
  7. ↑ Hurst, Lynda (July 2, 2005). "Island paradise or torture chamber?". The Toronto Star . Retrieved October 14, 2007.
  8. ↑ Selsky, Andrew (March 16, 2006). "Detainee transcripts reveal more questions". Associated Press. Retrieved October 14, 2007.
  9. ↑ Cobain, Ian; Norton-Taylor, Richard (2007-10-19). "Claims of secret CIA jail for terror suspects on British island to be investigated". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2007-10-21.
  10. ↑ Zagorin, Adam (2008-07-31). "Source: US Used UK Isle for Interrogations". Time. Archived from the original on August 5, 2008. Retrieved 2010-05-01.
  11. ↑ "Diego Garcia: the UK's shame". 4 August 2008 – via The Guardian.
  12. ↑ Cobain, Ian; Norton-Taylor, Richard (19 October 2007). "Claims of secret CIA jail for terror suspects on British island to be investigated". The Guardian .
  13. ↑ Doward, Jamie (2008-03-02). "British island 'used by US for rendition'". The Observer. London. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
  14. ↑ "Reportaje - Un 'yihadista' en el limbo". El País. 18 May 2008.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.