CIA Rendition Flights: EU Nations Knew And Kept Quiet: Rapporteur

Taken from Yahoo News, 28.11.06
By AFP

Most EU member nations knew about the US policy of CIA seizures of terror suspects abroad and kept the information from a European parliamentary enquiry, the committee's rapporteur Claudio Fava said.

"Many governments cooperated passively or actively (with the CIA). They knew," said Fava, presenting the committee's final report on the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) alleged use of European countries for the illegal transport and detention of prisoners.

He denounced "the very great reticence from almost all the member states (with the exception of Germany and Spain) to cooperate," with the investigation.

He named 12 EU nations as being involved - Austria, Britain, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden -- along with Romania, which will join the bloc in January, and non-EU nations Bosnia, Macedonia and Turkey.

Fava accused EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana of "omissions" in his evidence to the commission of enquiry on May 2.

"The Americans spoke in an explicit manner about the (prisoner) transfer system as a method in the fight against terrorism," during three meetings with the European side, said Fava, an Italian MEP.

He added that the Europeans had been informed of the practice by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at a NATO-EU meeting in February 2005 and subsequently at high-level meetings in Brussels on February 8 and May 3 this year.

He compiled a list of 20 cases of "extraordinary renditions" such as that of German Khaled el-Masri, captured in Macedonia in 2003 and detained for several months in Afghanistan or Egyptian Abu Omar seized by CIA agents in Milan the same year.

In September, US President George W. Bush admitted the existence of secret prisons abroad.

Fava also cited the cases of at least 1,245 CIA-run flights landing in Europe, most of them logistical flights but some which probably served to transport prisoners.

Over six months, the parliamentary commission took evidence from 130 people, including government officials, secret service agents, judges, lawyers, journalists and NGO representatives.

Members of the investigating commission also travelled to the United States, Britain, Germany, Poland, Portugal and Macedonia.

Fava offered little in the way of conclusions, simply inviting the EU authorities to "accept their responsibilities" to deal with the offending member states.

The final report added little to a preliminary report released in July, and maintained its main presumptions.

On the existence of secret detention centres it did "not exclude the possibility that the American secret services were operating at a secret base in Romania".

There could have been another detention centre in northeastern Poland, near the Szymany airport.

The parliamentary report will be discussed and then voted on by the full parliament in the new year.

A parallel enquiry is being carried out by the 46-nation Council of Europe.

Its rapporteur Dick Marty in June accused 14 nations of involvement in CIA secret flights and, in the cases of Poland and Romania, of housing clandestine detention centres.