LONDON, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Britain is "categorically" not involved in transferring terror suspects to prisons abroad for the purposes of torture, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Tuesday.
During a grilling by the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, Straw denied that any CIA flights carrying prisoners abroad had passed through British airfields.
He dismissed suggestions that a judicial investigation should be launched into reports that over 400 CIA flights have flown in and out of Britain since September 2001, saying the world should accept the "serious assurance" of the United States that it was not transferring prisoners abroad to be tortured.
After "thorough" searching of government records, no requests from the United States to use British airspace or airfields for prisoner transfers had been found, he said.
The United States government would have requested permission to do so as that had been "their persistent practice" in the past, he added, giving details of three such requests during the Clinton administration.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged during her recent European tour that the United States did transfer suspects abroad under a process known as extraordinary rendition, but insisted it did so entirely in accordance with international law.
U.S. interrogators were prohibited from using torture under a United Nations treaty, she stressed.
However, British parliamentarians have questioned whether the U.S. definition of torture corresponds to that of Europe, and have demanded clarification of why suspects are rendered abroad if it is not to avoid legal restrictions on treatment of detainees.
Straw said the British government entirely accepted her assurances, which should not be questioned by the international community.
"If somebody of the position of Secretary Rice, and her integrity, makes statements like this, they ought to be assumed to be correct," he told members of parliament.
He acknowledged that British officials did not ask questions about who was on board when military or private planes passed through airfields.
But he said: "Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories; that officials are lying, that I'm lying... that Secretary Rice is lying, there is simply no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition."
Asked by MPs whether he would allow Foreign Office officials to freely give evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee should it decide to investigate, Straw said he would not.
Straw's interrogation comes at a time when the government has been forced into the defensive over claims it is turning a blind eye to rendition flights.
A cross-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition is to table a parliamentary amendment which would ground CIA flights carrying suspects for rendition abroad through British airspace. The legislation would require the government to command police or customs to take action against the practice of rendition.
The British government has argued that under the 1944 Chicago Convention it is barred from grounding and searching foreign aircraft.
The prominent human rights group Liberty said Tuesday it was taking legal advice to challenge that argument, claiming that Britain's positive obligations under the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the European Convention on Human Rights take precedence over the Chicago Convention.
Liberty Director Shami Chakrabarti said the group was prepared to take on the issue of renditions in Parliament and if necessary in court.
"The government's assertion that the U.K., a sovereign nation, cannot investigate foreign aircraft in its airspace is remarkable. How then do we inspect aircraft suspected of smuggling drugs and hostages?"
Meanwhile, a Swiss senator investigating reports of CIA flights carrying prisoners for rendition through European airports and operating secret prisons on European soil told the EU human rights watchdog that the claims were "credible."
There was also evidence that since the media had reported the so-called "black sites," the CIA had moved detainees from Eastern Europe to North Africa, he said.
Dick Marty submitted a report on the allegations to a meeting of the Council of Europe, and released his findings in an official statement.
"The elements we have gathered so far tend to reinforce the credibility of the allegations concerning the transport and temporary detention of detainees -- outside all judicial procedure -- in European countries," he said.
"Legal proceedings in progress in certain countries seemed to indicate that individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal standards."
The strongly-worded report will add to the pressure for the European Union to investigate the claims, which are already the subject of judicial investigations in three European countries.
The European Union has warned that any country discovered to be in breach of the bloc's human rights standards could have their voting rights suspended.
Poland and Romania have been accused of harboring secret CIA jails, claims they deny.
Marty said it was "still too early to assert that there had been any involvement or complicity of member states in illegal actions."
But, he warned, if the allegations were found to be correct, any European states involved "would stand accused of having seriously breached their human rights obligations to the Council of Europe."
The senator also urged the United States to respond formally to the allegations, saying he "deplored the fact that no information or explanations" were given during last week's visit to Europe by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
In her response, widely denounced as vague and unsatisfactory, Rice refused to address claims that the United States was operating secret prisons abroad.
The parliamentary group on renditions says Britain may be at risk of breaching international law if it does not investigate further.
International law expert Professor James Crawford, of Cambridge University, told the group the British government must satisfy itself on the issue of torture rather than relying on U.S. assurances.
"A government is not exonerated from conduct which leads directly to a person being tortured merely by closing its eyes to that prospect," he said.
