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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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June 7th, 2006 - Report Suggests
Poland, Romania Allowed CIA Prisons News article by the Washington Post |
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Report Suggests Poland,
Romania Allowed CIA Prisons Several European Nations Implicated by Watchdog for Collusion With
U.S. Terror Detention Effort By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, June 7, 2006; 10:48 AM Berlin, June 7 - A European
investigator concluded Wednesday that there are "serious
indications" that the CIA operated secret prisons for suspected al-Qaeda
leaders in Poland and Romania as part of a clandestine "spider's
web" to catch, transfer and hold terrorism suspects around the world. In addition, Dick Marty, a
Swiss investigator working on behalf of the Council of Europe, the
continent's official human-rights organization, said at least seven European
nations colluded with the CIA to abduct and secretly detain terrorism
suspects, including several who were ultimately cleared of wrongdoing. He
said those countries should be held accountable under European human-rights
laws. Sweden, Italy, Britain,
Turkey, Germany, Bosnia and Macedonia "could be held responsible for
violations of the rights of specific individuals" who were handed over
to the CIA or captured by U.S. operatives in those countries, Marty said in a
report released Wednesday in Paris. "It is now clear,"
he added, "that authorities in several European countries actively
participated with the CIA in these unlawful activities. Other countries
ignored them knowingly, or did not want to know." While he acknowledged that
he lacked proof that would firmly establish the existence of the secret prisons,
Marty cited flight data and satellite photos that he acquired from European
agencies as evidence that the CIA transported high-level terrorism suspects
from Afghanistan to airports in Szymany, Poland, and Timisoara, Romania, in
October 2003 and January 2004, respectively. Marty said a close examination
of the flights indicated that the suspects were dropped off in those
countries for detention. "Even if proof, in the
classical meaning of the term, is not as yet available, a number of coherent
and converging elements indicate that such secret detention centers did
indeed exist in Europe," Marty wrote. Government authorities in
Poland and Romania have repeatedly denied that they permitted the CIA to
detain al-Qaeda suspects within their borders, although Marty accused both
nations of either stonewalling his requests for information or failing to
conduct serious investigations on their own. Marty, who lacks subpoena
power or other tools to compel countries to cooperate, began his probe after
The Washington Post reported in November that the CIA had established secret
prisons for suspected al-Qaeda leaders in eastern Europe, as well as in
Afghanistan and Thailand, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Post has not published
the names of the East European countries involved in the covert program, at
the request of senior U.S. officials, including a direct appeal from
President Bush. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt
counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and make them targets
of possible terrorist retaliation. Marty's report is scheduled
to be debated by the Council of Europe on June 27 in Strasbourg, France. The
council, which has 46 member nations, functions as Europe's primary
human-rights watchdog. Members are legally bound to observe its human-rights
statutes and treaties, although the council has limited powers to assess
sanctions. © 2006 The Washington Post
Company External link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/07/AR2006060700505.html Rendition
‘massively damaging’ to counter-terrorism effort Guardian Unlimited James Sturcke and agencies Wednesday June 7, 2006 The
British government's apparent support of CIA rendition flights is
"massively damaging" in the battle against international terrorism,
a former Foreign Office minister said today. Tony
Lloyd demanded that the Bush administration give "proper and definitive"
answers to allegations that it has been kidnapping terrorist suspects and
transferring them to countries where they could be tortured. He
was speaking as the Council of Europe human rights' committee named Britain
among 14 countries that had colluded with the CIA practice, and called on the
government to ask Washington "the right questions" about what the
US flights that passed through Britain were being used. He
also called for "truthful answers" from the Bush administration. "If
these things are born out, this process is really damaging to any attempt to
combat terrorism in our society," he said. "It leads to the
suspicion that what we are doing is the wrong tactic and even as bad as the
terrorists themselves." Mr
Lloyd, a foreign office minister between 1997-99, told the BBC's Today
programme that the word "rendition" was a euphemism for
"kidnapping" and as such would be illegal under British law. He
said it had to be established whether the British government had taken part
in an illegal activity under domestic law, and whether the Bush
administration had "abused agreements" over the use of British
airspace and airports. "But
the real issue is that this is massively damaging to the battle against
terrorism," he added. During
prime minister's questions, Tony Blair was challenged by the Liberal Democrat
leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, on whether the government had provided
logistical support to the CIA flights. "We
have said absolutely everything we have to say on this," Mr Blair
replied. "There is no more to add to that. The report adds absolutely
nothing to the information we already have. We have kept parliament
informed." The
government has acknowledged there were four rendition requests in 1998, two
of which were granted. A
Foreign Office spokesman said today that the department was still studying
the report but that there did not appear "to be much new stuff". He
repeated the government's line that some flights did land on UK soil but that
there was no evidence to suggest that they were being used for rendition
purposes. He also said the UK government did not condone torture in "any
way, shape or form". William
Hague, shadow foreign secretary, said: "It is very important that the
war against terror is conducted within the rule of law. Otherwise those of us
fighting terrorism lose our moral authority." Mr
Hague told Sky News he had warned the US administration on a recent trip to
Washington about the dangers of clandestine tactics in the war on terror. He
called for European governments to give "a convincing response" to
the report. The
Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on
extraordinary rendition, said there was now a "huge amount of
circumstantial evidence". "It's
important to remember we are democracy. The truth is going to come out,"
he told BBC Radio 4's The World at One. "For the prime minister just to
say 'oh I'm not going to say anymore, I've said all I'm going to say',
clearly isn't going to wash in the long run. "If
the UK has nothing to hide in which case why are they so taciturn? Is it
because they are protecting the Americans - or they do have something to hide
in which case people in the UK have broken the UK criminal law on a very
serious matter? Michael
Moore, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, demanded an
independent inquiry into the CIA flights. "This
report exposes the myth that European governments had no knowledge of or
involvement in rendition and secret detentions," he said. "Ministers
must answer specific allegations of British assistance, and explain why they
have failed to ask hard questions of their American counterparts." He
said that parliamentary questions tabled by Lib Dem MPs on specific flights
through the UK remained unanswered over two months on. "This
is wholly unacceptable and follows a pattern of evasion and obfuscation by
the government," he said. The
human rights group, Amnesty International UK, welcomed the report and
criticised European countries and the US for operating "contrary to
basic legal principles". "The
USA and all European countries must put an end to renditions and must conduct
independent and thorough investigations into the practice. They absolutely
must ensure accountability of their own and foreign intelligence
services," the group's rendition campaigner, Sara MacNeice, said. The
Polish prime minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, denied the report's
suggestion that the CIA flights stopped or dropped off prisoners in Poland. "This
is slander and it's not based on any facts," Mr Marcinkiewicz told
reporters in Warsaw. A
spokesman for the Spanish foreign ministry denied it had taken part
"actively or passively" in rendition flights. "The government
does not have even the slightest information" about stopovers on the
Balearic islands, El País website reported. Allegations
that CIA agents shipped prisoners through European airports to secret detention
centres, including compounds in eastern Europe, were first reported in
November by The Washington Post. The
humanitarian group Human Rights Watch later identified air bases in Poland
and Romania as possible locations of alleged secret prisons. Guardian
Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 External link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1792271,00.html Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe 7/06/2006 PACE committee: US has woven
clandestine ‘spider’s web’ of detentions and transfers, with collusion of
Council of Europe member states Strasbourg, 07.06.2006 – The
United States has progressively woven a clandestine “spider’s web” of
disappearances, secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers – spun
with the collaboration or tolerance of Council of Europe member states, the
Legal Affairs Committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly
(PACE) said today. In a draft resolution
adopted at a meeting in Paris, based on a report by Dick Marty (Switzerland,
ALDE), the committee said hundreds of persons had become entrapped in this
web – in some cases when they were merely suspected of sympathising with a
presumed terrorist organisation. The parliamentarians said
this knowing collusion of member states took several different forms,
including secretly detaining a person on European territory, capturing a
person and handing them over to the US or permitting unlawful “renditions”
through their airspace or across their territory. “It has now been
demonstrated incontestably, by numerous well-documented and convergent facts,
that secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving European
countries have taken place, such as to require in-depth inquiries and urgent
responses by the executive and legislative branches of all the countries
concerned,” the committee said. The committee called on
Council of Europe member states to review bilateral agreements signed with
the United States, particularly those on the status of US forces stationed in
Europe, to ensure they conformed fully to international human rights norms. The report is due for debate
by the plenary Assembly – which brings together 630 parliamentarians from the
46 Council of Europe member states – in Strasbourg on 27 June 2006. External link:
http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/Press/StopPressView.asp?CPID=1777 |