A tiny ocean island is home to a restricted US-UK military base. The secret just got out

A remote island in the Indian Ocean housing a secretive joint US military base is now under international scrutiny after a long-running territorial dispute between the UK and Mauritius appears to have come to an end.

The atoll of Diego Garcia — the largest of the Chagos Islands, and a relic of the UK’s colonial past — is home to the US Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, a military facility that was leased to the US Navy after hundreds of native Chagos Islanders were forcibly expelled from the island nearly 60 years ago.

It has since become a quietly powerful strategic base for America’s post-September 11 war on terror — as well as a rumored CIA black site and a landing strip for extralegal flights that amount to state-sponsored kidnapping.

Diego Garcia is roughly 1,000 miles from the nearest landmass. There are no commercial flights or permitted seacraft to get there. Visitors must have a permit to be on land.

As part of its investigation of a historic court case about the treatment of detained Sri Lankan Tamils who filed asylum claims on the island, BBC journalists were offered a rare permission to enter Diego Garcia, uncovering the scope of its secrecy and the UK’s surreal imprint on an island paradise that few people have even been allowed to witness.

Then, on Thursday, after weeks of negotiations, the UK announced it would cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius in a deal that will allow the US to keep operating the base there for another century.

UK government lawyers tried to block the BBC from attending a hearing in an asylum case on the island, and the US denied permissions for journalists to attend, citing “risks to the security and effective operation” of the military base, according to the BBC.

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