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Guantanamo Bay

We on this side of the Committee have always been particularly opposed to the Guantanamo experiment and the extent to which extra-legal imprisonment outside the Geneva conventions has been part of the US anti-terrorist operation. We are not here today to discuss the whole of extraordinary rendition, but I simply mark the fact that there are wider issues that will continue to exercise us. I have recently read yet further information coming out of the United States that suggests that Diego Garcia has been used as part of the extraordinary rendition programme. I gather that a large number of prisoners is still being held in Bagram, not all from Afghanistan. The question of what happens to them remains active. How far members of the British Government or intelligence agencies were aware of what was going on, or may indeed have colluded in questioning some of these prisoners, are questions that we must leave at the moment to lie on the table but which we have to come back to. Today, we are concerned with what happens to British citizens and residents as they are released from Guantanamo and whether Her Majesty’s Government will be playing an active role in taking non-British citizens in order to help the Obama Administration in closing Guantanamo—something which, in principle, we strongly support. However, we recognise that the practicalities are complex. We hope that the Minister can tell us the position on British citizens and residents who remain in Guantanamo. Progress has, we know, been made. What arrangements will be made for them as they return to Britain? I should like, however, to ask in more detail about the situation with Bermuda and, potentially, other British Overseas Territories, and how far we will share in taking non-British citizens. In a BBC report some days ago, a senior US official was quoted as having told the BBC that, ""it was a deliberate decision not to consult London on the resettlement, after other countries came under pressure from China not to accept Uighurs"." It is unclear from reports that I have read whether Her Majesty's Government preferred not to know what was happening, or were kept entirely out of the loop and were not informed about what was happening. I hope that the Minister may be able to throw at least a shadowy light on the distinction. Is he aware of any other consultation between the United States and other British Overseas Territories which might be willing to take such ex-detainees? Might there have been some agreement between Bermuda and the United States dating from the Cold War period which covered particular arrangements between them, as people have suggested to me, or was it simply a one-off? On non-British citizens, the European Union has, as the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, remarked, agreed in principle to help the Obama Administration close Guantanamo. Italy, I understand, has already agreed to take three of them; I do not know whether the Minister yet has information on whether other Governments have decided that they will share in this process and, if so, how many they will take. Do Her Majesty's Government consider that it should be part of our responsibility to help close Guantanamo and this deeply unfortunate episode in American foreign policy? If so, will we be willing to take people who would have to be kept in detention after they arrive in the United Kingdom? Whether we allow them to be released when they arrive here or recognise that they may also have to be detained—and, if so, under what authority—are more complicated issues. I hope that that does not raise too many questions for the Minister.