http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1694230,00.html
US accused of using gangster tactics over terror suspects
· Washington 'outsourced torture', says senator
· Critics attack lack of evidence in report
Nicholas Watt in Strasbourg
Wednesday January 25, 2006
The Guardian
Europe's human rights watchdog accused Washington
yesterday of using "gangster tactics" by flying in
terrorist suspects to countries where they would face
torture, and criticised European countries who appear
to have done nothing to intervene.
"If a country resorts to the tactics of gangsters I
say no," Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, said at the
Council of Europe's winter session in Strasbourg.
"There are different elements that allow me to say
that governments were aware of what was happening."
Mr Marty, who is investigating allegations of
"extraordinary rendition", estimated that more than
100 people have been flown to prisons in third
countries where they may have been tortured. "There is
a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing
to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or
'outsourcing of torture'," Mr Marty told the 46-nation
council.
"Individuals have been abducted, deprived of their
liberty and transported to different destinations in
Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they
have suffered degrading treatment and torture. It is
highly unlikely that European governments, or at least
their intelligence services, were unaware."
Mr Marty highlighted two examples. One is the
abduction by suspected US agents in 2003 of Abu Omar,
an Egyptian citizen who had been granted political
asylum in Italy. Another example is the arrest in
Macedonia of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of
Lebanese origin who was reportedly flown to Kabul for
interrogation.
"I am scandalised that a few kilometres from where I
live people can be lifted by foreign governments. When
someone goes on holiday in Macedonia they are lifted
by foreign agents," said Mr Marty.
Mr Marty is frustrated with the US and some European
governments for offering little cooperation as he
seeks to unravel allegations, which surfaced in the
Washington Post last year, that the CIA has been
hiding and interrogating suspects at secret detention
centres in eastern Europe or flying suspects to third
countries where they are tortured.
While Mr Marty believes that "extraordinary
renditions" do take place, he appeared to back away
from allegations that the CIA set up secret detention
centres in eastern Europe. "There is no formal,
irrefutable evidence of the existence of secret
detention centres in Romania, Poland or any other
country," he said.
Britain revealed a little more yesterday. Jack Straw,
the foreign secretary, wrote to Tony Lloyd, a British
member of the Council of Europe assembly, to say that
between May 1997 and this month the US asked Britain
to allow four people to be transported through the UK
to face trial in the US. Britain had allowed two to
pass through and blocked the other two. This took
place in 1998 when Bill Clinton was president.
The lack of cooperation from governments prompted
criticism that Mr Marty had relied too much on press
cuttings in his interim report. Mike Hancock, a Lib
Dem member of the assembly, said: "This report and
further reports need to have more substance and more
evidence of what has happened if the truth is going to
come out. Many of the issues have been clouded by myth
and a desire to kick America."
Denis MacShane, the former Europe minister who sits on
the assembly, said: "The Marty report has more holes
than a Swiss cheese. I have read it carefully and
there is nothing new, no proof, no witness statement,
no document that justifies the claims made."
But human rights groups welcomed the report. Shami
Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: "It is
time for our government to come straight - not about
what it did not know but what it is going to do about
such serious alleged violations of human rights and UK
sovereignty."
# # #