EU states criticised over CIA prisons response

A European Parliament committee criticised EU governments today for failing to address concern about CIA activities on European territory, and said allegations of CIA secret prisons and flights were now “beyond speculation".

“I am not at all reassured that there is sufficient determination by (member states) to get to the bottom of this and establish the truth,” said Sarah Ludford, a British Liberal Democratic member of the EU assembly’s civil liberties committee.

“We now have sufficient evidence involving CIA flights. We need to know who was on those flight, where they went.”

The committee said the parliament would decide at its mid-December plenary session in Strasbourg, France, whether to launch a formal probe into reports that the CIA hid and interrogated key al Qaida suspects at Soviet-era compounds in Eastern Europe and used European airports as staging posts for the transfer of prisoners.

Such investigation would add weight to a probe already being conducted by the Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights watchdog, which has no direct jurisdiction over any country.

“This affair hits Europe and very deeply affects the confidence of our people. Yet EU governments have little interest and will to sort this out,” German Green deputy Johannes Vogenhuber said.

While some deputies pushed for an inquiry committee to be set up immediately, others warned that without proper powers, it was unlikely to yield any results.

Allegations that the CIA hid and interrogated key al Qaida suspects at Soviet-era compounds in Eastern Europe were first reported on November 2 in The Washington Post. A day after the report appeared, Human Rights Watch said it had evidence indicating the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan through Poland and Romania.

Clandestine detention centres would violate the European Convention on Human Rights, a treaty legally binding on all European countries.

The EU parliament’s civil liberties committee said it wanted to ensure that the Council of Europe gets all the requested flight logs from the EU’s air safety organisation. The Council has asked the Brussels, Belgium-based Eurocontrol to provide details of several dozen suspect planes that flew through Europe.