EU's top justice official says rendition did take place

The European Union’s top justice official today acknowledged some renditions of terror suspects to foreign US intelligence agents have taken place on European territory.

EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini also called for thorough national inquiries into all reports of questionable activities of foreign intelligence agents and Europe’s collusion in human rights violations.

Frattini spoke after Europe’s leading human rights watchdog voted to continue its inquiry into alleged CIA secret flights and prisons in Europe and called for safeguards to prevent human rights abuses by foreign intelligence agents in the future.

Frattini said it was a ‘fact‘ that some such incidents have happened on European territory since the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States, but said the scope was not yet known, and it was not clear whether governments knew about them or co-operated and whether or not the renditions were legal.