A European investigator looking into allegations of secret, CIA-run prisons in Europe said on Monday that ”a great deal” of evidence pointed towards the existence of a US system of ”outsourcing” torture.
Swiss senator Dick Marty said it was also highly likely European governments knew what the US had been doing, and that more than 100 prisoners may have been involved.
He admitted, however, that he had uncovered no formal evidence so far of the existence of clandestine detention centres in Romania or Poland, as alleged by Human Rights Watch in New York.
The senator presented his findings in an interim report to the Council of Europe, the continent’s principal human rights watchdog, on whose behalf he is conducting his investigation.
”There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of ‘relocation’ or ‘outsourcing’ of torture,” he said the report.
”Acts of torture or severe violation of detainees’ dignity through the administration of inhuman or degrading treatment are carried outside national territory and beyond the authority of national intelligence services.”
The report said that extraordinary rendition — transferring terror suspects to countries where they may face torture or ill treatment — ”seems to have concerned more than a hundred persons in recent years”.
”It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware,” it concluded.
The Council of Europe launched its investigation after allegations surfaced in November that US agents had interrogated key al-Qaeda suspects at clandestine prisons in Eastern Europe and transported some suspects to other countries passing through Europe.
Human Rights Watch identified Romania and Poland as possible sites for secret US-run detention facilities, which would violate European human rights treaties. Both countries have denied involvement.
Marty’s report said there was no formal, irrefutable evidence of the existence of such facilities in Romania, Poland or any other country. ”Nevertheless, there are many indications from various sources which must be considered reliable, justifying the continuation of … investigative work,” the report said.
There have been allegations that more than 200 secret CIA flights were routed through British airports.
A leaked British Foreign Office memo obtained by the New Statesman last week said the government did not know how many times the US had used British airports for rendition flights.
The British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, told MPs last week that the government knew of only four requests, all of which pre-dated the September 11 2001 attacks, and two of which were refused.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Monday that the government had been ”extremely open” about its knowledge of the transfer of US terror suspects.
Blair said he knew of no requests from the US for the use of British airspace for rendition other than the four revealed by Straw.
”I think Jack has disclosed any of the cases that have been put to us … we have looked very carefully at whether there was any request made to us and we have disclosed the circumstances in which those requests were made,” he said. – Guardian Unlimited Â