European governments cover up illegal CIA abductions
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/may2006/euro-m23.shtml

By Martin Kreickenbaum

23 May 2006

Alleged terror suspects have been kidnapped in the European Union (EU) by
the CIA and taken to third countries where they have been subjected to
torture. The European governments knew of these illegal actions and were
even involved in them.

This is the conclusion reached in the first interim report of the
subcommittee of the European parliament examining the illegal activities of
the CIA within Europe. Dick Marty, the special investigator of the Council
of Europe, reached a similar conclusion in February. Forty-six European
states belong to the Council of Europe; the European parliament includes
representatives of the EU's 25 member states.

The European parliament has been examining the extent of possible CIA
abductions and transportation to secret prisons for four months and now has
evidence of more than a thousand unregistered flights that the CIA has
carried out in Europe since 2001.

The interim report arrives at the conclusion, "In several cases, the CIA was
clearly responsible for the illegal abduction and imprisonment of supposed
terrorists within the territory of the member states, as well as
extraordinary transfers, and that in some cases this involved European
citizens."

These extraordinary transfers, or "renditions," are characterised as clearly
breaching international law. As the report notes, they are aimed at ensuring
"that suspects are not submitted to legal proceedings." The CIA has
"secretly kidnapped, imprisoned and transferred terror suspects," the report
finds. They were despatched to other countries (including Egypt, Jordan,
Syria and Afghanistan), "which, as the government of the United States
admits, practice torture."

The author of the report, the Italian Giovanni Fava (a member of the PSE
social democratic parliamentary grouping in the European parliament),
commented that it was not a few "individual cases, but a widespread practice
involving the majority of the European states." Among the issues raised, he
referred to the fact that, remarkably, it was always the same agents who sat
in the CIA airplanes and that the circuitous routes flown by the planes
alone should have aroused suspicion.

In convoluted formulations, the report acknowledges the participation and
connivance of the European governments. Fava regards it as "improbable,
within the framework of the extraordinary transfers, that some European
governments did not have any knowledge of the activities that took place on
their territory and in their air space or at their airports."

In particular, the Swedish government is criticised for handing over the
Egyptian citizens Mohammad Al Zary and Ahmed Agiza to CIA agents, although
"it knew the risks of tortures and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatments"
that threatened the two in Egypt.

According to the report, the abduction of the Egyptian citizen Abu Omar by
CIA agents in Milan in February 2003 could hardly have been organised and
carried out "without the previous knowledge of the Italian authorities or
security agencies."

*German government knew since 2003*

The report also mentions the detainment of six Bosnian men of Algerian
origin, who were handed over to the CIA in January 2002 by the Bosnian
authorities, and who since that time have been held in Guantánamo. This case
also highlights the role of the UN occupation force SFOR, which is under
NATO command, and reveals the early collusion of the German government.

According to a statement by the US attorney Stephen Olesky, who represents
the six Algerians, they were arrested by Bosnian security forces in October
2001 as terror suspects. In January 2002, Bosnia Herzegovina's highest court
of justice acquitted them for lack of evidence, and the judges ordered their
release. However, on the night of January 17, the six were transferred to US
soldiers belonging to SFOR, although the court had expressly forbidden that
four of those acquitted be handed over to the US authorities.

Acting illegally and arbitrarily, the Bosnian authorities rescinded the
men's nationality, in order to hand them over to the US security forces. The
now-stateless men were portrayed as suspects who were allegedly planning an
attack on US facilities in Bosnia Herzegovina.

The illegal transfer to the US security forces obviously happened under
massive pressure from the Bush administration. Olesky told the committee
hearing: "US officials informed the Bosnian government that American
assistance for Bosnia would be withdrawn if the six men were not arrested."
Olesky is convinced that the transfer, illegal under Bosnian and
international law, was ordered at the highest levels in the Bosnian
government.

What remains unclear, however, is the role the SFOR troops played in the
transfer. It is worth noting that Paddy Ashdown, since 2002 the EU High
Representative in Bosnia Herzegovina, did nothing to prevent the illegal
transfer and has not responded to the efforts of the lawyers of the six men
to raise the case.

Six months later, in summer 2003, German Bundeswehr (armed forces) troops
stationed in Bosnia became involved in the case. Against regulations, German
soldiers disguised themselves as journalists in order to gather
intelligence. They visited family members of the six men and were given
access to court documents.

Although the German press has reported the subterfuge employed by the
Bundeswehr, the explosive results of their investigations has received scant
mention. A far greater scandal is that this elicited no reaction from the
German government.

A Bundeswehr captain wrote a report on the detainment of the six men, which
was obtained by the ARD television station. According to this report, the
investigation confirmed the suspicion "that at least some of the 'six'
suffered an injustice." Their "possibly unjustified arrest" and "highly
dubious deportation" means the information gained should "be submitted to
the appropriate specialists at the German embassy."

The report was eventually presented to the Ministry of Defence in Berlin,
which means that the government already knew in July 2003, six months before
the abduction of Khaled Al Masri, who has German and Lebanese citizenship,
of the illegal activities of the US in Europe.

Al Masri had been kidnapped by the CIA in Macedonia at the end of 2003 and
transferred to Afghanistan, where he was tortured. The Social Democratic
Party-Green Party coalition government then in power claimed that it only
found out about this afterwards. Now the Ministry of Defence is denying
knowledge of the report by the German SFOR troops about the case of the six
Algerians. The ministry told the press that it could not find the report in
the archives.

In the meantime, some photos contained in the report have emerged, but the
important associated documentation is still said to have disappeared. In the
parliamentary defence subcommittee, where the case has also been discussed,
the undersecretary of state responsible, Friedbert Pflüger (Christian
Democratic Union), held back important documents for more than one month,
only handing them over when this was demanded.

The government is behaving so nervously because the six men were flown to
Guantánamo via the US military base in Ramstein, Germany. The recent
exposures show ever more clearly that the German government had early
knowledge of the illegal CIA activities and is now seeking to sweep its
complicity in these human rights violations under the carpet.

*British government denials*

The British government is also trying to deceive the public. Confronted with
the European parliament's interim report, the recently demoted British
foreign minister Jack Straw told the* Guardian* he had no proof that the US
had used British air space or airports to transport prisoners. He says he is
convinced that Washington would have informed him about such plans.

However, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has
provided the committee with proof that the British secret service MI6 has
cooperated closely with the CIA for years and that a constant information
exchange takes place. He also submitted a document by Straw's former legal
advisor, Michael Wood, advocating the view that information obtained under
torture could legally be used, as long as the British had not carried out
the torture but merely received the information via a third party. This
position was then adopted by the British government, in order to utilise
confessions that had been extracted in Uzbekistan under torture.

The extensive material submitted so far by the committee permits only one
conclusion: not only did the US systematically breach international human
rights conventions, but the European governments were likewise guilty of
serious offences against the United Nations anti-torture convention and the
European human rights convention, either for keeping quiet, for doing
nothing or through their open complicity with the CIA.

In the next months, the committee wants to investigate whether secret CIA
prisons also exist in Europe. Giovanni Fava told the press conference: "If
we take into account the number of CIA flights, the conclusion could be
drawn that it was also about transferring people to prisons within Europe."

This view is also supported by a report in the news magazine *Stern *at the
beginning of April, according to which the CIA has been questioning alleged
terror suspects at a place near the Polish town of Kiejkuty. The facility is
thought to be a training centre for the Polish secret service, which is
shared by the US. There is said to be a special zone within the camp, to
which the Polish secret service does not have access. *Stern *writes, "Small
vehicles with darkened windows were parked on the base—the identical models
which workers at Szymany airport had already reported being seen when CIA
planes landed."

*Brussels inaction*

The special committee of the European parliament is a toothless paper tiger
within the Brussels bureaucracy. The European governments face no direct
consequences as a result of the report. The committee can neither force
governments to hand over files for its inspection nor demand government or
secret service staff appear to answer questions. The European parliament can
only recommend sanctions be taken against individual member states, since
only the European Union Commission or at least one third of member countries
can initiate action against individual governments.

Both the EU anti-terror coordinator, Gijs de Vries, and Javier Solana, high
representative for the common foreign and security policy, made certain
placatory noises following publication of the interim report.

De Vries saw "no proof" of the illegal transportation of prisoner by the CIA
in Europe. Asked about the connivance of European governments, he answered,
"I believe that is not yet proven." He did admit that the European
intelligence services and the CIA enjoyed "mutually beneficial cooperation,"
but this was not within the competence of the European Union.

Javier Solana, who came before the committee on May 2, took a similar
position. He said, "I have no information whatsoever that tells me with
certainty that any of the accusations, allegations, rumours that have taken
place in the last period of time are true. Also, I have no authority to ask
the [member] countries how they deal with these questions, and they have no
obligation to answer me."

While the Brussels authorities are quite willing to interfere in "domestic
affairs" in order to defend the interests of the international financial
investors, corporations and banks, they claim to have no authority when it
comes to human rights. This feigned disinterest is glaringly contradicted by
the fact that the field of justice and internal affairs is one of the areas
where the European Union member states are constantly extending their
collaboration.

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