MARTY REPORT: European governments are guilty of "intentional or grossly negligent collusion" in allowing the United States to establish "a global 'spider's web' of secret detentions and unlawful state transfers", the Council of Europe's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights said here yesterday.
The 46-member council derives its authority from the European Convention on Human Rights and is considered the continent's foremost human rights body. Last December, it designated Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, to investigate reports by the Washington Post, ABC television and Human Rights Watch of a vast network of CIA "renditions" in which men suspected of terrorist connections are kidnapped and transported illegally to secret prisons, often for torture.
Mr Marty's report is the most detailed account to date of the practice and will be debated in Strasbourg on June 27th.
Though he places primary blame with the US for "creating this reprehensible network", he also chastises European governments for allowing it "to spread over Europe". He concludes: "It is now clear 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."
The report holds 14 countries, including Ireland, "responsible for collusion - active or passive . . . involving secret detention and unlawful inter-state transfers".
Sweden, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Britain, Italy, Macedonia, Germany and Turkey received the sharpest criticism, for knowingly allowing human rights violations against victims of rendition.
Sweden turned two failed Egyptian asylum seekers over to CIA agents, who brutalised them and transported them to Egypt where they were tortured and imprisoned. Under US pressure, Bosnia entrusted four of its own citizens and two residents, all of Algerian origin, to the CIA. The "Algerian Six" had been cleared of alleged involvement in a bombing plot in Bosnia, but are still imprisoned in Guantánamo.
Mr Marty accuses British intelligence service MI5 of helping the CIA kidnap two British permanent residents, against whom there was no evidence, in Gambia. They too are in Guantánamo.
The case of Abu Omar, an Egyptian citizen kidnapped in Italy, is the most disturbing and best documented, the report says. Italian military intelligence service SISMI physically participated in Abu Omar's abduction.
"The Italian justice minister tried to obstruct the work of the prosecutor heading the investigation," Mr Marty said. "He made a grotesque statement accusing the Milan judiciary of attacking the terrorist hunters rather than the terrorists themselves. And he refused to transmit extradition requests for 22 CIA agents involved in the kidnapping."
Despite denials, Poland and Romania are suspected of harbouring secret detention centres. Though there is still no absolute proof of the centres, flight patterns of CIA aircraft on the "rendition circuit", two CIA sources quoted by the Washington Post, ABC News and Human Rights Watch, and the failure of Poland to co-operate with the committee have fed suspicion.
Germany, Turkey, Spain and Cyprus are "staging points" for flights involving the unlawful transfer of detainees, the report says. CIA agents habitually prepare for and rest after "rendition" operations in Palma de Mallorca.
Ireland, Britain, Portugal, Greece and Italy are cited as "stopovers" for such flights.
Mr Marty disposed of very little means to draw up his report and relied on flight records from air traffic agency EuroControl, plane-spotters, journalists, non-governmental organisations and "confidential contacts with persons in the administrations of the countries concerned, including the US".
He denounced the "veil of silence" over Europe. "Such a system is not possible without the participation at varying levels of the countries concerned. It may be state institutions or intelligence services, or simply an informal agreement that hasn't gone to the top. A lot of state institutions simply didn't want to know."
The Bush administration's belief that neither conventional justice nor the laws of war are adequate to fight the "war on terror" has resulted in the establishment of "judiciary apartheid", he said. "Non-Americans are excluded from any judiciary system if they are suspected of terrorist affiliation. The fact that the victims of this apartheid are Arab Muslims increases exasperation in these countries and creates more terrorists."
The Council of Europe places the highest priority on fighting terrorism, but considers it can be done through democratic, legal means. European governments have no strategy against terrorism and have simply acquiesced in accepting the US system, Mr Marty said. There was an urgent need for Europe and the US to develop a shared, legal strategy together. He also placed the burden of responsibility for investigation with national parliaments.
Asked why European governments have allowed the CIA to carry out such practices, he said: "They believe it's in their interest not to endanger their relations with the US. These relations take precedence over their values . . . It's up to civil society to react."