A REMOTE island in the Indian Ocean with a chequered past is now the site of a complex legal battle over the fate of Sri Lankan Tamil migrants, who have been stranded in this “paradise of lush vegetation and white-sand beaches, surrounded by crystal blue waters”, BBC News reported.

Diego Garcia, which is about 1,600 kilometres from the nearest landmass, features on lists of the world’s most remote islands.

It is one of about 60 islands that make up the Chagos Archipelago or British Indian Ocean Territory — the last colony established by the UK by separating it from Mauritius in 1965.

But this is no tourist destination, but the site of a highly secretive UK-US military base, shrouded for decades in rumour and mystery.

US military base on UK-controlled Diego Garcia said to be site where infamous ‘rendition flights’ would stop over

Now, a historic court case is being heard here over the treatment of Sri Lankan Tamils, the first people ever to file asylum claims on the island, who have been stranded there for three years.

Complex legal battles have been waged over their fate and a judgement will soon determine if they have been unlawfully detained.

The island, although administered from London, has most personnel and resources coming under the control of the US.

Tankers operating from Diego Garcia also refuelled US B-2 bombers that had flown from the US to carry out the first airstrikes on Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. And, during the subsequent ‘war on terror’, aircraft were also sent directly from the island itself to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Rumours have long swirled about the uses of Diego Garcia, including that it has been used as a CIA black-site — a facility used to house and interrogate terror suspects.

The UK government confirmed in 2008 that rendition flights carrying terror suspects had landed on the island in 2002, following years of assurances that they had not.

“The detainees did not leave the plane, and the US Government has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia. US investigations show no record of any other rendition through Diego Garcia or any other Overseas Territory or through the UK itself since then,” then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband told parliament at the time.

On the same day, former CIA director Michael Hayden said that information previously “supplied in good faith” to the UK about rendition flights — stating that they had never landed there — had “turned out to be wrong”.

“Neither of those individuals was ever part of [the] CIA’s high-value terrorist interrogation programme. One was ultimately transferred to Guantanamo, and the other was returned to his home country. These were rendition operations, nothing more,” he said, while denying reports that the CIA had a holding facility on Diego Garcia.

Years later, Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to the former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Vice News that intelligence sources had told him that Diego Garcia had been used as a site “where people were temporarily housed and interrogated from time to time.”

UK-Mauritius dispute

The island is also at the centre of a long-running territorial dispute between the UK and Mauritius, and negotiations have ramped up in recent weeks.

In 1967, the eviction of all residents from the Chagos islands began. Britain later granted citizenship to some Chagossians in 2002, and many of them came to live in the UK. They have fought for years to return to the land.

Mauritius, which won independence from the UK in 1968, maintains that the islands are its own and the United Nations’ highest court has ruled, in an advisory opinion, that the UK’s administration of the territory is “unlawful” and must end.

The UK government has previously stated that it has “no doubt” as to its claim over the islands, which had been “under continuous British sovereignty since 1814”.

However, in 2022, it agreed to open negotiations with Mauritius over the future of the territory, with then-Foreign Secretary James Cleverly saying he wanted to “resolve all outstanding issues”.

In a statement, new Foreign Secretary David Lammy — who has criticised previous governments for having for years “ignored the opinions” of various UN bodies over the islands — said the UK was endeavouring to “reach a settlement that protects UK interests and those of our partners”, as he stressed the need to protect the “long-term, secure and effective operation of the joint UK/US military base”.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2024