2ND EU lawmakers approve critical report on CIA renditions

dpa German Press Agency Published: Wednesday February 14, 2007

Brussels/Strasbourg- European Union lawmakers on Wednesday
approved a final report which slams EU governments for tolerating or
assisting the United States' practice of secret detentions of
terrorist suspects.
More than 10 European states, including Britain, Poland, Italy and
Germany aided or knew about the US secret service CIA's clandestine
programme of taking terrorism suspects to other countries for
interrogation, Euro MPs said in their report.

At least 1,245 CIA-operated flights flew over European airspace
or stopped over at airports in Europe after the September 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks in the US, Euro MPs concluded.

However, members of the European Parliament softened passages in
report which criticise their governments of turning a blind eye on
the so-called rendition flights or for lack of co-operation with the
committee's inquiry.

The report was adopted with 382 votes in favour, 256 against and
745 abstentions.

The vote in the parliament's full plenary in Strasbourg wraps up a
year-long investigation by a special committee of the EU assembly.

MEPs backtracked from calling for sanctions against member states
for human rights violations, saying it should be up to the European
Commission and EU ministers to decide on legal action.

In addition, they softened earlier criticism against national
governments, including Britain, Italy, Germany and Portugal.

However, the report says that the existence of a secret CIA prison
camp in Poland cannot be excluded - a disputed paragraph that had
been removed from the text last month.

Poland firmly denies the allegation.

Ahead of the vote, socialist and liberal MEPs argued that the
inquiry had exposed a string of abductions incompatible with EU human
rights standards.

Conservative deputies, however, warned that the report accused EU
governments of complicity without sufficient proof.

"The testimonies we received are facts and the facts speak for
themselves," said Italian Socialist MEP Claudio Fava, who drafted the
report, adding: "This is a vigorous analysis of five years of
excessive abuses."

Conservative MEP Jas Gawronski of Italy countered that the report
issued "a blanket condemnation of the secret services as a whole" and
that it was "predicated on the assumption that there is one chief
guilty party and that is the USA."

EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini told MEPs that security
and fundamental freedoms "can never be played off one against the
other" and urged EU member states to investigate the charges.

He also called for more EU-US cooperation on security issues and
on the respect for individual rights.

German minister for Europe, Guenther Gloser, said the US must
close down the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba. The EU would
not accept any compromise on human rights, he added.

Germany currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

EU sources said that some Euro MPs have been pressured by their
capitals to water down passages in the report which also slams their
governments for lack of co-operation with the committee's inquiry.

The Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights watchdog,
said last year that European governments have violated human rights
treaties by helping the US to transport terror suspects to other
countries for interrogation.

Clandestine detention centres, secret flights via or from Europe
to countries where suspects could face torture, or extraordinary
renditions would all breach the continent's human rights conventions.

In Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain prosecutors are now
investigating suspected cases of extraordinary rendition.

US President George W Bush last September for the first time
acknowledged that the CIA was running secret prisons for holding and
interrogating high-level al-Qaeda figures that had been captured
since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

However, Bush did not give in to European calls to make the
location of the camps public.

Allegations that CIA agents shipped prisoners through European
airports to secret detention centres, including compounds in Eastern
Europe, were first reported in November 2005.

The 48-member parliamentary committee started its probe in January
2006. It was working in tandem with an inquiry by the Council of
Europe. However, the committee has no power to sanction European
governments.

© 2006 - dpa German Press Agency