FRANCE/BELGIUM: Human Rights Watch says US administration could be taken to court over CIA secret prisons as EU lawmakers demand to know their locations

Human Rights Watch said the US could be taken to court for detaining and torturing suspects in secret CIA prisons which it says contravenes with the Geneva Convention. U.S. President George Bush admitted on Wednesday (September 6, 2006) that Washington held terror suspects in jails abroad. Speaking in Brussels on Thursday (September 7), Reid Brody of the Human Rights body said the European Union still needed to find out where the suspects were held, under what conditions and what the level of government complicity with the CIA in the countries and where the prisoners were held. He also said it was not clear if Bush intended for these prisons to continue to be used. However, Brody says the US administration could go to court if it is proved that the detainees were tortured. " What the Supreme Court said is that people in US custody, even when they are outside the United States can be protected by the Geneva conventions and the Bush administration is very worried that its officials could be responsible for war crimes if it's found that they committed torture or other illegal acts against these prisoners," Brody said. Human Rights Watch says there is strong evidence that the prisoners were subjected to torture and abuse. " President Bush also said that torture wasn't used on these people now there is very good information that some of these prisoners have been subjected to water-boarding and made to believe that they were going to drown. Most civilised nations consider that to be torture," Brody says. European lawmakers demanded on Thursday that their governments reveal the location of secret CIA prisons. "I think it makes European leaders look either foolish or liars and we're completely wrong-footed by President Bush because for all this time we've been told that it was not true about the allegations about the secret prisons and we were wasting our time inquiring into CIA rendition and torture flights and now it appears we weren't wasting our time," said British lawmaker Sarah Ludford. "Unfortunately Mr Bush's statement has proved our worst fears and more. When we were in Washington before the summer vacation, he said such a thing didn't exist and they didn't have any, now he says there were. It is up to the candidate countries now to explain whether they have prisons or not, because Mr Bush indicates that there are prisons on EU territory," said German lawmaker Wolfgang Kreissl-Doerfler. And in a written statement, Kreissl-Doerfler urged EU member Poland and candidate Romania to speak about accusations that they hosted secret detention centres on their soil. Bush said on Wednesday the Central Intelligence Agency had interrogated dozens of suspects at undisclosed overseas locations and 14 of those held had now been sent to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. A leader of Europe's chief human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, said the revelation vindicated the exhaustive investigation the body had conducted on secret prisons and CIA flights moving suspects around Europe. A Washington Post report last year that the CIA had run secret prisons in Europe and flown suspects to states where they could be tortured unleashed a spate of probes -- including one by the European Parliament -- prompting uncomfortable denials by European governments and evasions from Washington. EU lawmakers are set to travel to these two countries as well as Britain and Germany, as part of their investigations, Ludford said. "I think it gives renewed determination to members of the European Parliament and the Temporary Committee on Extraordinary Rendition to get answers from Europe's leaders and I think we have a much stronger basis on which to demand those answers," Ludford said. Extraordinary rendition is a term used for extra-territorial transfers of suspects without legal scrutiny. Bush's statement overshadowed a European Parliament debate on the future of a U.S.-EU agreement on the transfer of personal data on transatlantic airline passengers to U.S. authorities to help counter terrorism, which the European Court of Justice ruled illegal in May. The executive European Commission wants to replace it with a similar pact on a different legal basis when it expires at the end of this month. Most lawmakers accepted this short-term expedient to avoid disrupting air travel, but many demanded the EU seek better data protection guarantees when renegotiating the deal next year. The EU assembly's investigating committee is set to question the Spanish foreign minister and probably his Irish counterpart on accusations that EU countries colluded with the CIA in secret flights of terror suspects, lawmakers and diplomats told Reuters. Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos will be questioned on Sept 14, a Spanish diplomat said. He will be the first minister to agree to appear before the panel. Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern is also likely to give evidence to the committee in the next six weeks, a source in Ireland's ruling Fianna Fail party said. A Council of Europe report named Ireland as a key stopover in the CIA-operated rendition programme.

ITN Source | September 7, 2006

Tags:. .diplomat. .exhaustive. .basis. .territory. .extraordinary