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U.S. using gangster tactics: report

Nicholas Watt

Human rights agency accuses European nations of indifference to torture

Strasbourg: Europe's human rights watchdog accused Washington on Wednesday of using ``gangster tactics'' by flying in terrorist suspects to countries where they would face torture, and criticised European countries which 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.

—

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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