EU may ‘embarrass’ politicians over torture
European governments, including Ireland, will be asked to reveal what they know about the allegations that they are co-operating with the CIA in its operations.
The vice-president of parliament’s committee, Sarah Ludford, proposed inviting senior members of the US administration to tell what they know.
The 46 members of the temporary committee have no powers to compel anybody to attend and their findings will have no legal weight.
But they will use political pressure to force governments to tell what they know and help uncover the truth about secret CIA prisons and the sending of suspects to countries where they would be tortured.
“Our only power is political embarrassment with governments that are reluctant to co-operate with us,” said Ms Ludford.
Meanwhile, US President George W Bush insisted that a recently passed US law barring torture doesn’t contain loopholes that would allow abuses.
“No American will be allowed to torture another human being anywhere in the world,” Mr Bush said at a White House news conference.
Earlier this week, the head of a separate Council of Europe investigation into so-called CIA “rendition” of prisoners said it was “highly unlikely” that European governments were unaware that the CIA was flying prisoners across their territory for interrogation and torture in other countries.
Secret prisons on European territory and extraordinary rendition - the practice of transporting criminals or terror suspects to countries where harsh interrogation methods are permitted - would breach human rights treaties which all EU countries signed up to.
But Swiss senator Dick Marty also emphasised there was no firm evidence so far of the existence in any European country of secret CIA detention centres, said to have been set up after the terrorist attacks on America on September 11, 2001.
Ms Ludford’s call was supported by the committee chairman, Carlos Coelho, a Portuguese conservative who said MEPs would name those who refused to appear before them.
Mr Coelho refused to be drawn on specific names he would favour, but said the committee as a whole would decide who to ask to attend the meetings, after which a report will be drafted and presented to EU governments, some of which, it is claimed, are complicit in allowing the US secret agency to set up camps on their territory.
Irish MEP Simon Coveney, who is a member of the committee, said he believed it will thoroughly investigate the issues.
The allegations were highlighted by a Washington Post report of a Human Rights Watch report in November.
It said the CIA was using Soviet military compounds and jails in eastern Europe, including in Poland and Romania, to keep terror suspects agents had kidnapped.
Mr Bush also defended his programme of warrantless telephone surveillance yesterday, saying “there’s no doubt in my mind it is legal”.
He suggested that he might resist congressional efforts to change it.
“The programme’s legal, it’s designed to protect civil liberties, and it’s necessary,” he said.
Democrats have accused the president of breaking the law in allowing eavesdropping on overseas communications to and from US residents, and even some members of the Republican party have questioned the practice.
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