EU governments reluctant to help CIA secret prisons probe

EUROPEAN governments are not willing to reveal what they know about US intelligence service activities on their territory, effectively obstructing an investigation into allegations of CIA secret prisons and flights in Europe, Human Rights Watch said it planned to tell the European Parliament today.

“There are very daunting obstacles to carry out this investigation successfully. They have little interest in revealing these activities that are covert,” said Joanne Mariner, director of the New York-based human rights watchdog’s terrorism and counter-terrorism programme.

“No country wants this info to be revealed,” she said yesterday. “What you need is an official who will come forward.”

Mariner spoke ahead of a hearing organised by the European Parliament’s committee of inquiry into allegations that US agents interrogated al-Qaida suspects at clandestine prisons in Eastern Europe and transported some on secret flights that passed through Europe.

The allegations were first reported by The Washington Post in early November. The paper did not name the countries involved. Human Rights Watch identified Romania and Poland as possible hosts of secret US-run detention facilities. Both countries have denied involvement.

Clandestine detention centres would violate European human rights treaties. Swiss senator Dick Marty, who is leading a separate probe by the Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights watchdog, will participate in the hearing in Brussels, informing the EU assembly of his findings so far.

The EU assembly will also hear Italian prosecutor Armando Spataro, who has issued European arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives in connection with the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from Milan in 2003. The 22 purported agents allegedly were involved in the kidnapping of cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar.