http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060608/ap_on_re_eu/cia_secret_prisons_
15;_ylt=ArVvvxB7CMQJ2gl8pBpWSTWCdAEB;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Probe of CIA prisons implicates EU nations
By JAN SLIVA, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 7, 10:24 PM ET PARIS -
Fourteen European nations colluded with U.S. intelligence in a "spider's
web" of human rights abuses to help the

CIA spirit terror suspects to illegal detention facilities, a European
investigator said Wednesday. Swiss senator Dick Marty's report to Europe's
top human rights body was thin on evidence but raises the possibility of a
cover-up involving both friends and critics of Washington's war on terror.
It says European governments "did not seem particularly eager to
establish" the facts.The 67-page report, addressed to the 46 Council of
Europe member states, will likely be used by the rights watchdog to
pressure countries to investigate their suspected role in U.S. rendition
flights carrying terror suspects.Marty's claims triggered a wave of angry
denials but also accusations that governments are stonewalling attempts to
confront Europe's role in the flights.
"This report exposes the myth that European governments had no knowledge
of, or involvement in, rendition and secret detentions," said lawmaker
Michael Moore, foreign affairs spokesman for Britain's second opposition
party, the Liberal Democrats.In the strongest allegations so far, Marty
said evidence suggests planes linked to the CIA carrying terror suspects
stopped in Romania and Poland and likely dropped off detainees there,
backing up earlier news reports that identified the two countries as
possible sites of clandestine detention centers.
Officials in Romania and Poland vigorously denied the accusations.
"This is slander and it's not based on any facts," Kazimierz
Marcinkiewicz, Poland's prime minister, told reporters in Warsaw.
But Filip Ilkowski, leader of Poland's "Stop War" movement protesting the

Iraq war, said the Polish government was trying to thwart

European Union investigators.
"It is hard to say whether prisoners were dropped off here, but from what
we know, U.S. planes landed in Poland outside the official channels. The
government has done nothing to clarify the matter, it is doing everything
to cover it up," Ilkowski said.
British Prime Minister

Tony Blair also denied the collusion allegations and said Marty's report
contained no new evidence.
"I have to say, the Council of Europe report has absolutely nothing new in
it," he told lawmakers.
There was no immediate U.S. reaction.
Marty, investigating the flights since November, said the 14 European
nations ・along with some other countries including Iraq, Morocco and

Afghanistan ・aided the movement of at least 17 detainees who said they
had been abducted by U.S. agents and secretly transferred to detention
centers around the world.
Some former detainees said they were transferred to the U.S. detention
center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and others to alleged secret facilities in
countries including Egypt and Jordan. Some said they were mistreated or
tortured.
"I have chosen to adopt the metaphor of a global spider's web, a web that
has been spun out incrementally over several years using tactics and
techniques that had to be developed in response to new threats of war,"
Marty said.
In his investigation, Marty ・a former prosecutor ・relied mostly on
flight logs provided by the European Union's air traffic agency,
Eurocontrol, witness statements gathered from people who said they had
been abducted by U.S. intelligence agents, and judicial and parliamentary
inquiries in various countries.
He concluded that several countries let the CIA abduct their residents,
while others allowed the agency to use their airspace or turned a blind
eye to questionable foreign intelligence activities on their territory.
"European governments simply agreed not to want to see," Marty told
journalists.
He listed 14 European countries ・Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Bosnia,
Macedonia, Turkey, Spain, Cyprus, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Romania and
Poland ・as being complicit in "unlawful interstate transfers" of people.
Some, including Sweden and Bosnia, already have acknowledged some
involvement.
Marty put airports in Timisoara, Romania, and Szymany, Poland, in
a "detainee transfer/drop-off point" category, together with eight
airports outside Europe.
He said one plane arrived in Timisoara from Kabul, Afghanistan, on the
night of Jan. 25, 2004, after picking up Khaled El-Masri, a German who
said he had been abducted by foreign intelligence agents in Skopje,
Macedonia, and taken to the Afghan capital.
The investigator said the plane stayed in Timisoara for 72 minutes before
leaving for Spain.
"The most likely hypothesis of the purpose of this flight was to transport
one or several detainees from Kabul to Romania," Marty said in the report,
without elaborating.
But Dan Andrei, the head of Romania's Civil Aeronautic Agency, denied that
the CIA operated the plane.
"The plane did not drop off or pick up any passengers and declared five
passengers on board. We don't have any evidence that it was a CIA plane,"
he said.
Marty said he believed the Szymany airport in northeastern Poland was also
used for a rendition flight in September 2003.
A parallel investigation by the European Parliament has said data show
there have been more than 1,000 clandestine CIA flights stopping on
European territory since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Officials said it
was not clear if or how many detainees were on board.
"We're definitely not talking about hundreds of detainees, it likely is a
much smaller number," Marty said.
Allegations that CIA agents shipped prisoners through European airports to
secret detention centers, including compounds in eastern Europe, were
first reported in November by The Washington Post. Clandestine prisons and
secret flights via or from Europe to countries where suspects could face
torture would breach the continent's human rights treaties, including the
European Convention on Human Rights. The Council of Europe has no power to
punish countries for breaching the treaty other than terminating their
membership in the organization. Based on irrefutable evidence, the
European Union might be able to suspend the voting rights of a country
found to have breached the convention.

--
i050225a@yokohama-cu.ac.jp