CIA 'plane used for torture flights landed in Britain last week'

The row over the use of British air bases for American "torture" flights flared up again last night following evidence that a plane linked to the transport of terrorist suspects landed in Britain on Wednesday.

A Gulfstream IV private jet, which has been identified by Amnesty International as a CIA-linked plane implicated in so-called "rendition," arrived at RAF Northolt in West London just hours before the Government was forced into a humiliating U-turn on the practice.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband admitted to the Commons on Thursday that two US rendition flights landed at a British air base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in 2002 – despite previous repeated denials from Tony Blair and Jack Straw.

Former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett revealed poor record keeping could be to blame for the government's late disclosure on the subject.

Ms Beckett, who is now chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, said that when she was Foreign Secretary she was told by the Americans that there was no evidence of British airspace being used for the flights.

She told BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show: "It was very difficult for the Government to go back and look at what had happened on previous occasions. There was not a clear, simple trace of record keeping.

"That may, I don't know, have been the case in the United States also."

The Government is now re-examining dozens of other possible cases for evidence of UK links.

The Gulfstream jet, registration N134BR, flew from Morristown, New Jersey in the US to Northolt on Wednesday, returning on Friday afternoon. Planespotters also photographed it landing in Luton in January.

There is no suggestion that the jet, which has undergone two changes of registration since 2001, was carrying prisoners. But it was listed in a 2006 Amnesty report into rendition as being owned by a CIA front company and thought to have been used for the transfer of terrorist suspects.

Last night Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights group Liberty, called for an inquiry into rendition flights to clear up lingering suspicions about British complicity in secret CIA activity.

"It should not be down to planespotters and citizen activists to keep track of these activities," she said.

"There should be a full independent UK inquiry into our role in State-sponsored terrorism – the only investigation so far, by the European Parliament, was blocked at every turn by the British authorities."

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In his statement on Thursday about the British base at Diego Garcia, Mr Miliband said he was "very sorry indeed" to have to correct previous statements denying that rendition flights had landed on British soil.

But he insisted that in both cases the aircraft involved had carried only one detainee, who did not leave the plane.

However, human rights activist Graham Ennis, director of the Omega Institute think-tank, who has long argued that US rendition flights stopped on Diego Garcia, said last night he did not believe the claims that the prisoners did not leave the US aircraft when they landed on the island.

In 2006, the Government admitted for the first time that aircraft chartered by the CIA had landed 14 times at Northolt and RAF Brize Norton, in Oxfordshire, between October 2003 and May 2004.