Dirty hands - Europe complicit in shuffling prisoners

EU governments condoned torture, Swiss investigator says
24.01.2006 - 09:59 CET | By Teresa Küchler EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European governments have silently condoned the practice of abducting suspected terrorists and transporting them from European airports to countries in which torture is used, a Council of Europe (CoE) investigation has revealed.

Dick Marty, a Swiss parliamentarian and the chief investigator in the probe into alleged US seizures of foreign prisoners and the existance of secret CIA prison camps in Europe briefed the CoE on Tuesday (24 January) in Strasbourg.

"It has been proved - and in fact never denied - that individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and transported…in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered…torture," Mr Marty announced.

"It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware of the 'rendition' of more than a hundred persons affecting Europe," he said.

Mr Marty added there was "a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of ?'relocation' or ?'outsourcing' of torture."

However, he acknowledged that, at this stage, there was no formal, irrefutable evidence of the existence of secret CIA detention centres in Romania, Poland or any other country.

Allegations of illegal CIA activities in Europe were first voiced in November last year, after a Washington Post report said that the CIA used camps in Eastern European countries to interrogate terrorist suspects.

Later on, the organisation Human Rights Watch reconfirmed the allegations, mentioning Romania and Poland as possible sites for US detention camps, adding that interrogation methods amounting to torture could have been used.

Leaders in Romania and Poland have consistently denied hosting US detention centres, however.

Washington has neither confirmed nor denied the allegations over secret prisons in Europe but has denied using or condoning torture.


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