EU body hopes for satellite footage access in CIA probe

Europe’s leading human rights watchdog said today it soon hopes to be able to monitor satellite footage of suspect sites in Romania and Poland as part of its investigation into alleged secret CIA prisons and flights in Europe.

A top Council of Europe official said that the body has been granted access to satellite footage in the archives of the EU’s main satellite centre, as well as log books held by the EU’s air safety organisation.

“They are willing to give us the information we need, but they need the permission of the national authorities,” said Rene van der Linden, chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

He said all 25 EU nations would have to give permission for such a step.

Despite US efforts to settle the issue, reports of secret CIA prisons, flights transporting prisoners and allegations detainees were mistreated continued to reverberate around Europe as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice headed to Brussels today for talks with her counterparts from Nato and the European Union.

Adding to questions about how much German authorities knew of clandestine CIA operations, the government in Berlin acknowledged that the country’s then Interior Minister Otto Schily was informed in 2004 by a US diplomat about the case of a German citizen who claims he was mistakenly abducted by the CIA and mistreated during five-months detention.

However, Italy’s Premier Silvio Berlusconi vigorously denied his government knew anything about the alleged 2003 abduction of a radical Egyptian cleric that prosecutors have blamed on the CIA. France’s Defence Minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, said reports that clandestine CIA flights made stopovers in French airports were “probably not” true.

In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he accepts assurances from Rice that flights which have moved terrorist suspects between countries have conformed to international standards.

The Council of Europe has tasked Swiss senator Dick Marty with an investigation into the CIA’s reported transfers of prisoners through European airports to secret detention centres. Poland and Romania have been identified by the New York-based Human Rights watch as sites of possible CIA secret prisons, but both countries have repeatedly denied any involvement.

Van der Linden, in Brussels to discuss the CIA allegations with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, said Marty started by studying the flying patterns of 31 suspect flights. But the number has since grown considerably.

Marty has asked for images of suspect sites in Romania and Poland and details of several dozen flights. Van der Linden said the Council was determined to “get to the bottom of the issue and find the truth".

“It’s tremendously difficult to find out, but it’s our duty to continue,” he said.

Brussels-based Eurocontrol – also known as the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation – develops, co-ordinates and plans pan-European air traffic management strategies. Member states send Eurocontrol their flight logs - of both civilian and military flights – but do not publish them.

The EU’s satellite centre is based in Torrejon de Ardoz, Spain.

The Council of Europe, based in Strasbourg, France, is the guardian of the European Convention on Human Rights, a legally binding human rights treaty signed by all 46 Council members. It has no direct jurisdiction over any country, but can exercise political pressure.