MEPs must not play politics today when they consider a report on rendition flights, writes Dick Oosting
Last October Europe expressed outrage at the murder of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. The president of the European Commission said that Moscow's credibility was "on the line over its ability to prosecute those responsible".
The European Parliament backed the call for an investigation and recommended that the EU Council "give serious thought to the future of relations with the Russian Federation".
The Russian government denied any involvement and there was no hard evidence linking it to the murder. But the EU reacted in force and rightly so because it knew the difference between actual involvement and political responsibility.
It was a very different story when the first CIA rendition cases came to light in November 2005. Europe's leaders were dismissive. Very few countries opened investigations and most capitals responded with heavy silence, despite growing evidence that European airfields had served as stopovers to Guantánamo and that people with the "wrong" name and skin colour had been kidnapped in Europe and sent to countries where they were tortured.
The recent arrest warrants issued against CIA agents in Italy and Germany show how real and how serious an affair this is. That these things happened is no longer contested and yet, ironically, governments keep demanding a level of proof that, given the inherent secrecy of these operations, could only be achieved if they themselves were to co-operate fully.
The European Parliament is at risk of letting itself be caught in this paradox. It rose to the occasion by setting up a special committee that throughout this past year heard very disturbing evidence. Maher Arar, Khaled El Masri and Murat Kurnaz were some of the victims - people who have never been accused, let alone convicted, of any crimes - who came to Brussels to ensure their ordeal would not be ignored. Travelling from Canada, Arar told parliamentarians that in order to be present he had dared to enter an airplane again for the first time.
But when the committee's final report was up for adoption a few weeks ago, national and political interests kicked in. With the two largest political groups pressing to scrap anything that might cause embarrassment at home or to political friends, the committee failed to adopt the report with a clear majority.
Today the European Parliament will face a crucial test as all of its 785 members are called to vote on this report.
The gravity of what happened must override all other interests; the report should carry the largest majority of all responsible political groups if it is to succeed in making governments finally take responsibility.
It is not only the human rights leadership of the European Parliament that is at stake, but most of all the message it will be sending to European governments. The European Parliament has the opportunity to make a difference.
If, on the contrary, it clouds responsibility of member states by political horse-trading, we may yet see those cherished European values vanish into thin air, like CIA aircraft into the night.
• Dick Oostingis director of Amnesty International's EU office