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IN the depths of the Indian Ocean lies an island home to a secretive military base believed to be one of the CIA’s notorious Black Sites.
Diego Garcia, a white-sand paradise isle, also houses dozens of trapped asylum seekers who have been stuck there in a makeshift prison for almost three years.
Diego Garcia, site of a major United States military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean
Reuters
Reuters
Getty
Owned and leased to the US Navy by Britain, Diego Garcia hosts as many as 5,000 American military personnel along with dozens of ships and aircraft.
After 9/11, US bombers launched attacks on Afghanistan from the island, banned except for authorized military crew.
It was also used as a launching pad for attacks on Iraq during the 2003 invasion.
An investigation by TIME magazine in 2008 revealed how a secret CIA black site on the island was being used for “nefarious activities” between 2002 and 2006 as part of America’s War on Terror.
In 2006 questions were raised about whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a 9/11 mastermind now held at Guantanamo Bay, was on the island, the Associated Press reported.
More recently in 2015 a senior Bush administration official told VICE news how US prisoners were interrogated in a CIA Black Site on the isle.
Human rights group Reprieve has also alleged that US Naval ships docked at the island were used to torture detainees.
In October 2021, some 60 people fleeing conflict in Sri Lanka were sailing across the Indian Ocean in hopes of reaching Canada.
When their boat started to sink, British navy ships rescued them and took them to Diego Garcia.
The asylum seekers were told their boat would be repaired so they could sail out again – but instead they were essentially imprisoned on the island.
They have spent almost three years stuck there, The Guardian reports.
One of the passengers from the shipwreck said: “I’ve been put in a prison on this island although I have committed no crime.
“My mental state is deteriorating. I live in a body that has no life inside it.”
Officials on the island have restricted their movements, keeping them in a fenced off area the size of a football pitch, surrounded by a 7ft high metal fence.
“We cohabit with the rats,” one mum on the island said.
“They taste the food on our plates; climb on top of our children when they are sleeping and bite us.”
The group, which includes 16 children, are only allowed to leave the cordoned area for medical care or occasional beach trips.
Someone in the camp told The Guardian: “One three-year-old child deliberately broke his teeth so he could go out to the dentist and get soft food.
“He wanted to eat a banana, which we don’t usually get.”
Diego Garcia reportedly has a downtown area with bowling alleys, bars and shops where US military can go out drinking and dancing.
There are tennis courts, parks and softball pitches.
Some wild conspiracy theories swirled after the disappearance of MH-370, which disappeared in 2014 with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board, that the jet landed on Diego Garcia.
The White House press secretary rubbished the claim at the time, with officials later dubbing it a “baseless conspiracy theory”.
The UK, working with the US, had forcibly expelled the indigenous population from the island in the years between 1968 and 1973.
By 1977, Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia was officially established in an American naval base on the island.
It is leased to the US by the UK and is now contested territory as Mauritius claims it belongs to them, not Britain.
Diego Garcia is the largest island in the Chagos Archipelago, part of the British Indian Ocean Territory.
Just south of the equator, it lies along a major trade route between Asia and Africa.
The US Navy has dozens of ships positioned around the island and its lagoon.
Bomber aircraft and at least one USS aircraft carrier are also thought to be housed there.
The British government states online that only those with connections to the military base are allowed to visit the island.
A US Navy statement about the island reads: “U.S. Navy Support Facility Diego Garcia provides logistic support to operational forces forward deployed to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf areas of responsibility in support of national policy objectives.”
AFP
English (US)