Report On 'Renditions' Implicates 14 European States

Dick Marty, the author of the Council of Europe report (file photo) (official site) June 7, 2006 -- A report issued today by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe accuses 14 European governments of "intentional or grossly negligent collusion" with the United States in the secret detention and transfer of terrorism suspects to countries where they may be tortured, a practice known as extraordinary rendition.

The report by Europe's leading human rights watchdog says Bosnia, Britain, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey either actively or passively colluded in the practice.


Some are accused of bearing "responsibility in varying degrees" for rights violations.


The report states that it is clear authorities in some European countries "actively participated" with the CIA in unlawful activities. It says other governments "ignored those practices knowingly, or did not want to know."


Poland and Romania were singled out for tolerating the operation of CIA secret detention centers.


Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz has called the report "slanderous" and said it is "not based on any facts."


Norica Nicolai, the head of a Romanian parliamentary commission investigating alleged CIA flights to Romania, rejected the report's accusations that Romania harbored CIA detention centers as "pure speculation."


Government officials, some of them unnamed, from Britain, Macedonia, and Spain have also criticized the report for allegedly not proving its allegations.



(AFP, Reuters)