US agents abducted terror suspects, says Euro-probe

European investigators looking into claims of secret CIA prisons will release an interim report today saying US agents illegally transported and held terrorist suspects on the continent, the leader of the inquiry says.

Swiss senator Dick Marty told The Associated Press that the report would focus on reported cases of the US sending suspected terrorists to countries where they would probably face torture.

It will include an Egyptian cleric allegedly kidnapped from Milan, Italy, in 2003 by CIA agents and a German captured in Macedonia and taken to Afghanistan in an apparent case of mistaken identity.

But the report would not contain new evidence on the location of alleged detention centres in Europe, Marty said.

Marty is investigating on behalf of the Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights watchdog, which launched the probe after allegations surfaced in November that US agents interrogated key al Qaida suspects at clandestine prisons in eastern Europe and transported some suspects to other countries passing through Europe.

New York-based Human Rights Watch identified Romania and Poland as possible sites of secret US-run detention facilities. Both countries have denied involvement. Clandestine detention centres would break European human rights treaties.

A Council of Europe official urged national authorities and EU bodies to co-operate more with investigators, saying the probe was not meant to punish countries for violating the treaties but rather to “name and shame” possible offenders.

“I would like to see some parliaments (stand up to) the governments,” said Rene van der Linden, chairman of the council’s parliamentary assembly, an advisory body comprising several hundred national parliamentarians.

Van der Linden said the investigators still had not obtained log books archived by the Brussels-based air safety organisation Eurocontrol so they could determine flight patterns of several dozen suspected CIA planes. Experts say flight logs could help to determine whether the CIA secretly transported prisoners to Europe.

The 46-nation council also has sent a letter to European governments asking them to provide all information they had on possible secret detention centres on their territory by February 21. Many governments have not yet responded, and some claim they have not even received the letter.

“This investigation can’t succeed unless member states provide more information and the relevant flight records,” said John Sifton, terrorism and counterterrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch, adding investigators must be more aggressive.

“Member states need to come clean about all they know about secret detention centres” and the transfer of suspects to other countries.”

Van der Linden said he hoped the probe could be wrapped up by March, but Marty said he might need more time for his investigation.

“It takes time to find justice, but I am optimistic,” Marty said.

Last week, Italy’s justice minister formally asked the US to allow Italian prosecutors to question 22 purported CIA operatives they accuse of kidnapping the Egyptian cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr in 2003 from a Milan street.

Nasr, believed to belong to an Islamic terror group, was seized on February 17, 2003. Prosecutors claim the cleric, who is also known as Abu Omar, was taken by the CIA to a joint US-Italian air base, flown to Germany and then to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.

The operation was believed to be part of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” programme in which terrorism suspects are transferred to third countries where some allegedly are subjected to torture.

“In the Abu Omar case is a crystal clear case of extraordinary rendition,” said Marty. “Italian investigators built a net around him, and the Americans destroyed it all.”

Prosecutors say the cleric’s abduction was a serious breach of Italian sovereignty, and that it had hindered Italian terrorism investigations.