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Europe 'knew' About CIA Flights
Strasbourg, 24 Jan. (AKI) - There can be little doubt that European governments allowed the US Central Intelligence Agency to operate secret flights via European airspace or airports - on which abducted terror suspects were transported to countries where they were tortured, a key investigation has found. But no hard evidence has yet emerged for the existence of alleged secret 'CIA prisons' on European soil, according to the findings of a probe commissioned by the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights watchdog."No cogent evidence has yet emerged of the existence in European detention camps like the one at Guantanamo Bay [Cuba]," said Dick Marty, a Swiss MP heading the probe. "On the other hand, it has been proved (and in fact never denied) that individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and all rights and and transported to different destinations in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered degrading treatment and torture," Marty continued. "It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware," he added. There was a great coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outscourcing of torture', Marty said in preliminary report prepared for the 46-nation Council of Europe. Marty cited the case of the Egyptian, Abu Omar, a former imam, who was abducted by the CIA in broad daylight from the northern Italian city of Milan in 2003, flown to Egypt via Italian and German military bases, and once there, allegedly tortured. Over the weekend, Italy's justice minister Roberto Castelli gave the go-ahead for Italian magistrates to question 22 CIA agents in the United States in connection with Omar's illegal kidnapping (rendition), in a process of international cooperation between courts known as a rogatory. The Council of Europe investigators are trying to obtain records from the European air safety body, Eurocontrol, that might track the flights of suspected CIA planes. They have not yet succeeded in doing so. The European Parliament last weeked set up a temporary committee to investigate the CIA 'renditions'. The 46-member parliamentary taskforce will collect and analyse information in close cooperation with the Council of Europe, and will seek to establish the exact level of knowledge or complicity of European governments. The Washington Post newspaper in November broke the story, with allegations that the CIA had been running secret detention facilities in eight countries around the world, including the Eastern European countries of Romania and Poland - whose leaders have consistently denied hosting such prisons. US secertary of steate Condoleezza Rice has said that 'rendition' is a useful tool against terrorism, but says the US does not condone 'torture'. Posted by: Steve 2006-01-24 |
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