UK government to be sued for involvement in CIA rendition program

The British government is being sued for the first time over its complicity in the operation of the CIA rendition program. A former detainee at Guantanamo Bay, now living back in Pakistan, claims the CIA plane that took him to be interrogated in Egypt stopped to refuel on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. has an air base. Mohamed Saad Iqbal Madni is filing a lawsuit in the High Court in London that alleges the stopover makes the British complicit in the torture he received at the hands of the Egyptians and Americans–and, moreover, the British government now has a duty to help him win justice. Madni says he was first beaten up, tied in chains, and then packed on a Gulfstream jet in a wooden box when he was picked up in Jan. 2002 in Jakarta, Indonesia. He says he was still bleeding from his nose, mouth and ears when the plane touched down to refuel six or seven hours into the flight.