LONDON — Human rights lawyers launched on Tuesday, July 28, a legal fight against the British government over involvement in a CIA infamous rendition flight which saw a Pakistani flown through British territory to where he was tortured. "For too long, Diego Garcia has been used as a safe haven for the US and UK to commit criminal acts," Clare Algar, executive director of the legal advocacy group Reprieve, said in a statement.

"It is about time this territory was subjected to the scrutiny of UK and international law."

The group says the British government knowingly allowed Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni to be transferred from Indonesia to Egypt via a US airbase in Diego Garcia, a British-ruled island in the Indian Ocean, in 2002.

Once in Egypt, Madni, 31, says he was tortured for three months and then sent to Guantanamo where he was held for six years before being released last year without charge.

Reprieve is demanding a judicial review of the government's decision to refrain from examining Madni's allegation that he was one of two suspects transferred through the British territory.

If successful, the legal case could formally link Britain America's controversial renditions for the first time.

"Mr Madni's case is the first step towards restoring the rule of law to Diego Garcia," insists Algar.

Britain has repeatedly denied the use of its territories by the CIA to fly suspects to secret prisons, a technique used widely by the Bush administration.

The US reportedly rendered more than 100 people from one country to another, usually with well-documented records of torture.

Complicit

Reacting to the lawsuit, the government insisted it had been unaware at the time when rendition flights entered and left its territory. "The movement of detainees through UK territory without our permission, whilst concerning, does not mean that the UK has been complicit in torture," the Foreign Office said in a statement.

"We have made our disappointment about these flights clear with the US. We condemn unreservedly any use of torture."

But rights lawyers insist that Britain remains complicit for not investigating the cases despite knowing about them.

"The issue for Britain is that Diego Garcia is a British territory, we're responsible for it and what happens on it," Clive Stafford-Smith, Madni's lawyer, told BBC News.

"The Americans are meant to tell us what they are doing and we, as supervisor of Diego Garcia, have a responsibility to make sure that crimes do not happen on it.

"There was an awful lot of playing the ostrich where the government knew what was going on but just buried its head in the sand."

British newspapers have recently revealed that renditions were not confined to Diego Garcia.

The Mail on Sunday reported in June that a plane owned by an American security corporation landed at the Royal Air Force station of Mildenhall in the county of Suffolk in the same month.

It substantiated the report with a photo taken by spotters of the CASA-212 Aviocar plane as it prepared to land.

The paper had earlier published pictures of three planes linked to the CIA at Scottish airports, suggesting that Britain was a regular stop for such flights.

The Council of Europe had accused former Prime Minister Tony Blair of colluding in a CIA operation to run secret prisons in Poland and Romania by allowing the CIA to use UK airports.

MP Andrew Tyrie, who heads a committee looking into Britain's role in rendition, hopes the Madni's case would expose the truth.

"The litigation announced today will contribute to the growing amount of information on rendition and British involvement in it," he said.

"But the drip-drip of revelations about UK involvement in renditions is hugely damaging."