The British Government has been labelled a "partner in crime" for its role in secret flights to transport terrorist suspects.

It was accused of adopting a "see no evil, hear no evil" approach to so-called rendition flights set up by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

A report published by Amnesty International claimed the Government had broken international and domestic law.

It called for an independent inquiry into rendition flights and for all European governments to publicly reject the practice.

The paper was published a week after Europe's human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, named Britain as one of 14 European countries which colluded in the practice.


An earlier inquiry had found the CIA ran a "global spider's web" of covert flights to take suspects to secret prisons all over the world for interrogation.

It was feared many suspects were tortured after being taken to countries with poor human rights records.

The Amnesty International report attempts to put the British Government's fingerprints on the case of two men.

UK residents Bisher Al-Rawi, 38, and Jamil El-Banna, 44, were arrested after flying to Gambia in 2002.

They were handed over to US agents, eventually transferred to Afghanistan and then flown to Guantanamo Bay where they have been held for three years.

The Government denied authorising rendition but it has been accused of providing the CIA with information and allowing access to its airports.

The allegations were supported by a photograph showing a small plane on a runway in Afghanistan and then the same plane on the tarmac in Scotland.

Get them to hand over all their rights and civil liberties, and you will have a police state.

That could not happen here, could it? Police (arriving en masse) in the middle of the night to take you away? Innocents being shot?

It will never happen in the UK !