Has the CIA used British airports to "render" terror suspects from Afghanistan and the Middle East to countries that practice torture? The short answer is that we don't know. The 200 CIA flights that we now know about could well have been simply moving agents around - the war on terror is keeping them busy after all.
But should we be suspicious? Yes. Not only is there clear evidence that the US administration has taken a different view of human rights since 9/11 but there is mounting evidence that the CIA has "rendered" prisoners.
Nineteen CIA agents are wanted in Milan for the kidnapping of Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, an Islamist cleric dragged into a van near his home in February 2003. He was flown to Egypt for interrogation, and later told relatives that he had been tortured with electric shocks. There is evidence of other flights from Sweden, Denmark and Austria.
Why should Britain be any different? The CIA, according to Jack Straw, asked the British government for permission to "render" prisoners back in 1998. Is it really credible that this hasn't happened in Britain since 9/11? Tony Blair told reporters today that there was absolutely "no evidence" that 200 CIA flights were rendition flights. He said there was a procedure whereby the Americans ask permission before rendition flights happen and it shouldn't be assumed the US is not telling its closest ally of these movements.
Mr Blair is facing questions about these allegations today because MPs on the foreign affairs select committee have accused the government of being slow in investigating and of failing to make it clear to Washington that rendition flights to countries that practise torture are unacceptable. The MPs have been frustrated by the government's less than frank answers to their questions. A revealing exchange between the committee chairman, Labour MP Mike Gapes and the foreign secretary Jack Straw, is published in the annex to today's report.
It shows that not only has the government has been trying to give evidence in private but their answers to direct questions are both misleading and incomplete. This has led one of Mr Straw's predecessors Sir Malcolm Rifkind to claim that the present foreign secretary's responses on rendition have been like those of a secondhand car salesman.
