Investigator links Europe's spy agencies to CIA flights

[cal04]

CIA prisoners in Europe were apparently abducted and moved between countries illegally, possibly with the aid of national secret services who did not tell their governments, according to the first official report on the so-called "renditions" scandal. Dick Marty, a Swiss senator investigating allegations of secret CIA prisons for the Council of Europe, said that he did not think the US was still holding prisoners in Europe, but had probably moved them to north Africa last month. Mr Marty said in a statement after a Paris meeting of the council that his information so far "reinforces the credibility of the allegations concerning the transfer and temporary detention of individuals, without any judicial involvement, in European countries".

The council has set its 46 members a three-month deadline to reveal what they know about the transfers. Mr Marty said that if it was proved that European governments knew the renditions process, involving flying terrorist suspects to secret interrogation centres, was going on, they "would stand accused of having seriously breached their human rights obligations to the Council of Europe". The senator acted as British MPs and peers were told by an international lawyer that their government would break the law if it did not investigate allegations that the CIA transferred terrorist suspects via Britain to secret camps where they may have been tortured. "Credible information suggesting that foreign nationals are being transported by officials of another state, via the United Kingdom, to detention facilities for interrogation under torture, would imply a breach of the convention and must be investigated," James Crawford, professor of international law at Cambridge University, told the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition.

Yesterday in his interim report the Swiss senator criticised the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, for refusing to confirm or deny allegations, first published in the Washington Post last month, that the CIA maintained secret prisons in Europe, "The rapporteur ... deplores the fact that no information or explanation had been provided on this point by Ms Rice during her visit to Europe," he said. The US state department said Ms Rice had no specific response to Mr Marty. A spokesman, Justin Higgins, said: "The secretary has made numerous statements on this issue and on these allegations starting when she departed for Europe on December 5 and on her various stops in Ukraine, Romania, Germany and Belgium, and she's said all she wants to say on this subject for the time being."

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based watchdog, claimed that Poland and Romania may have been sites for possible CIA prisons, but both countries have denied the allegations. Mr Marty has demanded air traffic log books, and satellite pictures of an airport in Poland and an air base in Romania. The senator said he believed European secret services had collaborated over the flights well beyond exchanges of information. "I think it would have been difficult for these actions to have taken place without a degree of collaboration," he said. "But it is possible that secret services did not inform their governments." The Foreign Office had no immediate comment on Mr Marty's statement.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,16518,1666925,00.html

[DELUSIONAL]

1. the evil virus just spreads and spreads

there is no moral compass -- none.

[CJCRANE]

2. *'s CIA has kidnapped more people

than the so-called terrorists.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. Lol

...possibly with the aid of national secret services who did not tell their governments...

:rofl:


Plausible deniability ain't what it used to be.

[cal04]

4. Minister denies CIA planes landed in Portugal

Foreign Minister Diogo Freitas do Amaral on Tuesday denied media reports that CIA planes had used Portuguese airports to transport militant suspects to third countries. "The Portuguese state has not given any authorisation for landing or overflight of aeroplanes of the kind alleged in the press and that would have violated our legislation and international law," Freitas do Amaral told parliament's constitutional and rights committee.

Pressure has grown on Washington and European governments to explain dozens of flights criss-crossing the continent by CIA planes, some suspected of delivering prisoners to jails in third countries where they may have been mistreated or tortured.

The left-wing opposition had requested that Freitas do Amaral appear before the committee after local media published pictures of aircraft at Portuguese airports, which they alleged were used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The weekly magazine Focus reported the planes could have been used by the CIA to carry militant suspects.

Freitas do Amaral said the state had no indication that such planes had ever passed through Portugal under the present government, which came to power early this year, or previous ones.


http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=6314470&cKey=1134506114000

[sonias]

5. Once again we have to get our real news from overseas

How in the world does our CIA get European secret services to do this for them? And I wonder if in fact their governments really weren't in on it.

Disgusting and shameful of the CIA and the US. I hope they do get a full investigation by the European council. They'll probably get to the bottom of this before the US Congress ever gets to it.

Sonia

[Earth_First]

6. "But it is possible that secret services did not inform their governments.

POSSIBLE!? I have no doubt!

[Englander]

7. I wonder how many detainees were 'rendered'.

Or how many countries were/are involved in all of this.

[Clara T]

8. Part of a Much Wider System

A Boeing 737 BBJ with registrations N313P and N4476S, which may have carried terror suspects, has been seen at UK airports and is seen here at Palma, Majorca. Photograph: Toni Marimon/Airliners.net

United States: trade in torture

Five hours after the arrest of Zery and another Egyptian, Ahmed Agiza, both were deported from Stockholm’s Brömma airport. It was not revealed for another two years that there had been a US plane at the airport, plus a team of US agents who, it has been claimed, picked up the suspects, manacled their wrists and ankles, dressed them in orange overalls, drugged them, and bundled them into the plane.

Jönsson said the US team “were wearing black hoods and they had no uniforms; they were wearing jeans. The Swedish security police described them as very professional.” The whole operation took less than 10 minutes. “It was obvious that they have done things like this before.”

The events, including the presence of the US agents, were kept quiet for months. But in response to concern in Sweden, its parliament has set up an inquiry and already released documents that confirm what happened. In one, the head of the deportation operation with the Swedish security agency, Arne Andersson, said they had problems obtaining a plane that night and turned to the CIA: “In the end we accepted an offer from our American friends . . . in getting access to a plane that had direct over-flight permits over all of Europe and could do the deportation in a very quick way.”

<snip>

The confirmation that US agents were involved in the Swedish case provided the first concrete evidence that since 9/11 the US has been involved in organising a worldwide traffic in prisoners. Official and journalistic investigations show that the US has systematically organised the repatriation of Islamic militants to countries in the Arab world and East Asia where they can be imprisoned and interrogated using methods forbidden to US agents. Some call it torture by proxy. Prisoners have been captured and transported by the US not only from Afghanistan and Iraq, but from Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Albania, Libya, Sudan, Kenya, Zambia, Gambia, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia.

The official term, coined by the CIA, is “extraordinary rendition”. No serving US official will discuss it in public. But a former senior official of the CIA, who left the agency last November, has provided a detailed and candid explanation. Michael Scheuer, who in the late 1990s headed the unit tasked with hunting down Osama bin Laden, was interviewed for a BBC Radio programme, File on Four. He confirmed the Swedish case was part of a much wider system.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11305.htm