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Europe "colluded'' with U.S. on CIA flights

Hasan Suroor

Some nations were staging posts, says report

LONDON: In a searing indictment of Europe's role in facilitating CIA's secret "torture'' flights, an inquiry has named 14 European states which, in different ways, reportedly helped America in abducting alleged terror suspects and sending them to countries where they might have been tortured.

It has also accused two countries — Romania and Poland — of allowing the CIA to set up detention centres on their soil, though both Governments have strongly denied the allegation calling it "libellous'' and based on "speculation.''

The 14 countries, named in a report by Dick Marty, chairman of the Council of Europe's human rights watchdog, include Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Cyprus, Ireland, Greece, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Bosnia and Macedonia.

The report, released in Paris on Wednesday, said while Spain, Turkey, Germany and Cyprus provided "staging posts" for the flights, Britain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece were "stop-off points."

Countries which allowed their soil to be used by the CIA to abduct terror suspects were Italy, Sweden, Macedonia and Bosnia, according to the report.

It said there was enough evidence to suggest that secret CIA detention centres were set up in Poland and Romania.

The report, which followed a seven-month long investigation, said: "It is now clear — although we are still far from having established the truth — 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."

This is Mr. Marty's final report on how the CIA used European airspace and other facilities as part of its controversial programme of "extraordinary rendition'' under which people suspected of terror links were kidnapped and sent to third countries where interrogation techniques are said to include torture.

In an interim report earlier this year, he had said European governments were aware of the use of their airspace by the CIA

Describing the operation as a "spider's web,'' the final report says it was based on an "utterly alien'' approach and was in breach of human rights.

It says though the U.S. must take full responsibility for the flights, it was able to operate them only with the "intentional or grossly negligent collusion of the European partners."

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