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Extraordinary Rendition

My Lords, I do not even understand the question. The term ““rendition”” has been used loosely. Whether any particular rendition is lawful depends on the facts of each individual case. The records of the four cases I have mentioned showed that the Government granted the United States’ request in two cases, and refused it in the other two. In both cases where the request was agreed, the individuals were transferred through the United Kingdom in order to stand trial in the United States. There is no ambiguity in what happened on those occasions. Where we are requested to assist another state and our assistance would be lawful, we will decide whether or not to assist by taking the circumstances into account. We would not assist in any case if it would put us in breach of UK law or our international obligations. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, that there is no intelligence involvement in this either. I have no reason to believe that any government agency has acted in a way that does not conform to those obligations. There has been no collaboration with the CIA, and no responsibility for anything that might be claimed to have happened in other countries. I will not comment in detail on what the United States and Secretary Rice have said. Those are matters of record in this House. In response to requests for information about specific aircraft allegedly linked to the rendition operations, the Secretary of State for Transport published flight information held by or supplied to his department in respect of those aircraft. The Ministry of Defence did likewise in connection with the use of those aircraft in respect of military airfields. On military airfields, the United Kingdom has given the United States military and state aircraft clearance to overfly the United Kingdom and to land at military airfields in the United Kingdom without seeking prior permission. Where aircraft transit through military airfields for refuelling, for example, passengers do not leave the airfield; the airfield is required to record the registration number, the outward bound destination, the names of the pilots, the aircraft owner, but it does not record details of passengers. I think that is as true of the landings which have been referred to at Brize Norton or RAF Northolt. The noble Lord, Lord Garden, described the process and the routines involved in that and I do not believe I can add anything. I do not think there is any basis for investigating those flights either. We have clear assurances that the United States will not move people through this country or through its airspace on the basis of extraordinary rendition. It may be of interest to the House to note that there are 3.5 million takeoffs and landings in the United Kingdom and 1.1 million of them are non-commercial flights. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, that the provision of passenger lists on that kind of basis, without grounds for believing that something is actually happening other than unsubstantiated allegations,would be an extraordinary operation and one that Ido not believe a Government of any party would contemplate. We have co-operated fully with the inquiries into rendition by the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, but neither Dick Marty’s report of the 7 June nor any other document should lead to the conclusions that have been drawn in this House. His report was entitled, Alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states. The interim report of the EP’s temporary committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for transportation and illegal detention has also been looked into. I ask noble Lords to have a look at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee’s fourth report on Foreign Policy Aspects of the War against Terrorism, published on 2 July. The all-party report concluded that although there has been speculation about complicity by this Government in unlawful rendition, "““there has been no hard evidence of the truth of any of these allegations””." That is hardly a basis for feeling ashamed of our nation. It is neither a police state nor a secret state. Our position on torture is absolutely clear. We unreservedly condemn the use of torture and we work hard with our international partners to eradicate this abhorrent practice. We abide by our commitments in international law in every respect. On the specific points about Benyam Mohammed al Habashi, referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, he was interviewed once by the security services in Karachi in 2002, but the security services had no role in his capture or in his transfer to Pakistan. There is no evidence that they drew on or passed on matter to anyone and I do not believe that there is any significant or substantial evidence or probability that they did so.