Charles Kennedy

Liberal Democrats | Ross Skye & Lochaber

Kennedy Write To Blair Seeking Clarification About Extraordinary Rendition

Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, has written to the Prime Minister following their exchanges at Prime Minister’s Questions, seeking clarification of the Prime Minister’s answers about ‘extraordinary rendition’.

Mr Kennedy asks the Prime Minister for details of the flights, how long the Prime Minister has known about this policy and why these flights are taking place, if they are not for purposes of ‘extradition or torture’?

Full text of letter follows.

The Rt Hon. Tony Blair MP
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London
SW1

07 December 2005

I am writing with regard to your answers to me at Prime Minister’s Questions about the US policy of ‘extraordinary rendition’.

Could you clarify a number of points:

At Prime Minister’s Questions, you told me that ‘in respect of airports, I don’t know what he’s referring to.’  In fact, I was referring to the already published European Air Traffic and US Federal Aviation Administration data about extraordinary rendition flights. Can you now provide the full figures for the number of extraordinary rendition flights that have passed through UK airports and airspace since the policy began? 

When you told me that extraordinary rendition had been US policy for ‘many years’, did you mean that it has been the policy just of this administration, or of preceding US administrations?

Have you known about this throughout your time as Prime Minister and, if not, when did you first learn of such a policy?

At what stage did you give approval for British acquiescence in facilitating such a policy through the use of our airports and airspace?

If this has been such long-standing policy, can you advise me whether these 400 flights involving 18 airports represent a substantial increase in such activity?

Given that the Foreign Secretary wrote to the US Government in his role as Chair of the EU Council of Foreign Ministers expressing concern about extraordinary rendition flights, are we to assume that the Foreign Secretary was not aware at the time of writing, and, unlike the Prime Minister himself, that this was a long-standing US policy?  

Finally, can you explain why these flights need to take place?  If terrorist suspects are not being transported either for extradition or for torture,  what possible reason is there for so many flights taking place around the world?

Rt Hon. Charles Kennedy MP