The United States has progressively woven a clandestine “spider’s web” of disappearances, secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers – spun with the collaboration or tolerance of Council of Europe member states, the Legal Affairs Committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) said today.
In a draft resolution adopted at a meeting in Paris, based on a report by Dick Marty (Switzerland, ALDE), the committee said hundreds of persons had become entrapped in this web – in some cases when they were merely suspected of sympathizing with a presumed terrorist organization. The parliamentarians said this knowing collusion of member states took several different forms, including secretly detaining a person on European territory, capturing a person and handing them over to the US or permitting unlawful “renditions” through their airspace or across their territory. Among “staging points” for launching CIA renditions, Marty identified Adana-Incirlik in Turkey, and Baku, Azerbaijan.
“It has now been demonstrated incontestably, by numerous well-documented and convergent facts, that secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving European countries have taken place, such as to require in-depth inquiries and urgent responses by the executive and legislative branches of all the countries concerned,” the committee said. The committee called on Council of Europe member states to review bilateral agreements signed with the United States, particularly those on the status of US forces stationed in Europe, to ensure they conformed fully to international human rights norms. The report is due for debate by the plenary Assembly – which brings together 630 parliamentarians from the 46 Council of Europe member states – in Strasbourg on 27 June 2006.
For his part, Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis stated that Senator Marty has carried out a great deal of work under complicated conditions. “He has brought serious accusations as regards several European states. I would like to note that governments of some states have refuted the accusations immediately. However I consider that before refuting the governments had to clear up whether an investigation was carried out. I intend to prepare a number of proposals targeted at prevention of such violations of human rights in Europe.”
