US 'held Terrorist Suspects on Uk Territory'

The US held terrorist suspects on the British territory of Diego Garcia as recently as 2006, according to senior intelligence sources. The claims, which undermine Foreign Office denials that the archipelago in the Indian Ocean has been used as a so-called 'black site' to facilitate extraordinary rendition, threaten to cause a diplomatic incident.

The government has repeatedly accepted US assurances that Diego Garcia has not been used to hold high-value members of al-Qaeda who have been flown to secret interrogation centres around the world in 'ghost' planes rented by the CIA. Interrogation techniques used on the suspects are known to include the use of 'waterboarding', a simulated drowning that Amnesty International claims is a form of torture.

But the government's denials over Diego Garcia's role in extraordinary rendition are crumbling. Senior American intelligence sources have claimed that the US has been holding terrorist suspects on the British territory as recently as two years ago.

The former intelligence officers unofficially told senior Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon that Mustafa Setmarian, a Spanish-based Syrian accused of running terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, was taken to Diego Garcia in late 2005 and held there for months. The Spanish are trying to locate and arrest Setmarian for separate terrorist offences.

It is thought that more than 10 high-value detainees have been held on Diego Garcia or on a US naval vessel within its harbour since 2002. The suggestion, if true, is acutely embarrassing for the British government, which has admitted only that planes carrying al-Qaeda suspects landed on Diego Garcia on two occasions in 2002.

However, a former senior American official, familiar with conversations in the White House, has also told Time magazine that in the same year Diego Garcia was used to hold and interrogate at least one terrorist suspect.