Ian bell on extraordinary rendition

WELL, that's a relief. Nothing worse than "unfortunate", according to Gordon Brown. Better still, his foreign secretary, David Miliband, is "very sorry" for a couple of events way back in 2002 that were overlooked in "good faith". These things happen. They happen, at any rate, if you look the other way when torture is going on.

Still, when the issue of CIA rendition flights and ghost prisoners was stretching the world's credulity beyond its elastic limits back in 2005, didn't Jack Straw, another foreign secretary, make reference to "careful research by officials"? This was research so scrupulous, supposedly, it enabled Straw and Tony Blair to insist repeatedly that no Gulfstream flights to or from America's secret international prison network had sullied our airspace since September 11, 2001. Scrupulous, and dead wrong.

Hindsight, as Miliband may one day concede, says that this last detail should not have come as too much of a surprise. Officially, Britain has become aware of its collusion with the two (admitted) flights only due to "a US records search". Do we keep no records of our own? Diego Garcia is, after all, a British dependent territory, theoretically at least, albeit leased to the Americans.

So how do those on the ground react when a strange aircraft turns up unexpectedly and an American pops his head from the cockpit to ask that they fill her up and fetch him a couple of burgers? Most people would have at least wanted a chit for the gas, just for the files. Not the US or HMG, it appears. Diego Garcia may be our "territory", but we run it with a very light touch. By some accounts there are no Britons even around to witness what might be going on there. You may wish to believe it. Don't ask, as they say, and don't tell.

Don't tell the British public, at any rate, or rather don't tell the public while it is still in a mood to ask, when an issue has yet to fade into the political background noise and when any admission, even of two oversights, is liable to cause a bit of trouble. Ideally, you wait until Blair is out of the way and Straw is in another job. A Miliband or a Brown is then spared the pain.

As several publications have recalled since Thursday's revelations, in 2005 Blair responded to this possible connivance in (still more) illegal behaviour. It is something of a classic in a Blairite genre rich with examples.

Said the last prime minister, once again pained and hurt by distrust: "I have absolutely no evidence to suggest anything illegal has been happening here at all, and I am not going to start ordering inquiries into this, that and the next thing, when I have got no evidence to show whether this is right or not I have never heard of such a thing. I can't tell you whether such a thing exists."

Lawyers, human rights campaigners and, finally, the Council of Europe were required to fill in the gaps in his carefully assembled knowledge. Early last year, a report for the council concluded that more than 1000 covert CIA flights had crossed European airspace or stopped at European airports in the four years after the 9/11 attacks. Yet somehow, officially, each flight managed to avoid Britain en route to helpful jurisdictions in the near and Far East.

After some evasiveness, the US has admitted to the existence of the secret prison network. It claims, however, that after "tough" but "lawful and necessary interrogations" (George W Bush) of 14 individuals, the facilities are no longer in use. Campaigners and parliamentary committees alike have had to point out that secret detention, far less the sport of waterboarding, is illegal, not least in the US system. Campaigners would also like to know the whereabouts of 39 named individuals known to have fallen into American hands, who seem to have vanished from the face of the earth.

Terrorists, no doubt - so who cares? If not terrorists, regrettable mistakes. With even Iraq slipping from the news schedules, with Afghanistan noticed in a paragraph when this week's fatality is recorded, it's hard for politicians and the public to keep up. Obama is exciting everyone with talk of hope, change and the possibility of bringing troops home sooner than 2108, which John McCain appears to have in mind. People want to move on. Miliband and the Foreign Office may also have asked themselves the question: who cares?

Oddly enough, America's government has been known to care, and care quite deeply, about rendition, black prisons, and those tough interrogations. Each came about, spreading across the globe like a rash, because they could not be sanctioned within the confines of the US, even by the wilder attempts to redefine its law. The same applies, as even Republicans grudgingly admit, to Guantanamo. The problem, if problem it is, lies first with the American constitution, and second with international law.

Blair was a lawyer, once upon a time. In government, he had many other distinguished lawyers to call upon. Saying that his idea of standing shoulder to shoulder with Bush made some of them uneasy is difficult to dispute. Others were remarkably pliant, able to tune themselves to the prime minister's wavelength and come up with the advice he needed. Only last week, thanks to what remains of freedom of information, we heard - just a little too late, yet again - of the fascinating first draft of the Iraq weapons dossier.

You remember: the one no longer supposed to possess physical existence; the one Miliband's department fought tooth and nail to keep out of the public domain; the one they were attempting to censor (lest it upset the Israelis) until the last possible moment.

My point is this: what we have of the paper trail from the war on terror shows two things. Firstly, politicians who believed they could ride out any amount of public protest, face down any number of accusations of deceit, and still have their perpetual conflict. Secondly, a group obsessed with the need somehow to fix legal opinion and keep themselves in the clear lest one day posterity should come calling.

Anyone inclined to say international law does not matter should remember as much: it mattered to these jokers. Not because they gave it respect - that ended in the charade at the UN - but because they spotted a host of potential problems. The CIA has not been destroying videotapes of interrogations by accident.

I DOUBT - make that refuse to believe - that the implications of rendition flights escaped these fine minds. Blair and Straw knew well enough that merely helping torture along with a little stop-over hospitality does not count as an excuse. You can believe they chose to steer clear of intelligence operations conducted by the UK's closest ally; or you can bear in mind all the other solemn claims of rectitude that failed to make contact with the truth.

Another little difficulty for Brown and Miliband will be managed, no doubt. Short of testimony from service people and airport staff liable to have been present when flights came and went, the pair may escape with shamefaced apologies for a couple of minor oversights that were, of course, not truly their doing. They count on a limited attention span of public and media alike, and the fact that too many people still regard it as unthinkable even to question Britain's relationship with the US.

Last week, Miliband's priority was to urge us all to accept the "deep regret" of Condoleezza Rice for those 2002 "mistakes". It strikes me there are a few other things he could consider regretting first. Perhaps the foreign minister could raise them with Rice one of these days. Or perhaps ask her, just for my parochial sake, of the Gulfstreams that some still insist paid several visits to Scotland.