BELGIUM/FILE: European lawmakers prepare to vote on report about secret CIA flights

Despite pressure from their governments, a vote by European lawmakers on Wednesday will likely be critical of the role of some European countries in so-called extraordinary rendition flights conducted by the American C.I.A. As the European lawmakers prepare to vote on a report accusing their governments of knowing about secret CIA flights, the Council of Europe urged MEPs to vote with their conscience not to protect their governments. Members of the European parliament are under pressure from their governments to water down the report ahead of the vote on Wednesday (February 14). Adoption of the report will conclude a year of investigations by a European Parliament committee into allegations that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency secretly held terrorism suspects in Europe and flew them to countries that practice torture. The charges, which surfaced in the media in late 2005, caused widespread concern across Europe and prompted investigations in Italy, Germany and Spain. Italian and German prosecutors have issued arrest warrants against some suspected of involvement in abductions. The European Parliament's two main groups have prepared amendments to tone down a draft report which says there is strong evidence of illegal CIA "renditions" of terror suspects, and that several EU states knew of them and concealed the truth. 'The Council of Europe' is a human rights watchdog representing 46 European nations which is also probing the CIA abuse allegations. The secretary general, Terry Davis, urged the MEPs not to bow to pressure. "When I was a member of parliament in the United Kingdom for 28 years I always took the view that I not only had a loyalty to my party and to my government but also a higher loyalty as well: a loyalty to my principles and values, the things for which I stood and sometimes that led me to vote differently from my party," Davis said. 'The Council of Europe' was responsible for the adoption of the European Convention of Human Rights in 1950. Terry Brody, of Human Rights Watch, said European officials didn't provide to the European Parliament all the information they had, and feared a weak report may result. ''A weak report would show that Europe is not serious with distancing itself from these illegal CIA activities. A weak report would show that Europe is very strong when it comes to criticising abuses in the Sudan or in China but not if these abuses are taking place in Europe.'' For Brody, each day brings new evidence of European complicity in illegal CIA activities. ''At the same time that European countries are rightly criticizing the illegality of the whole Guantanamo situation, we found out that many of these same countries - Spain, Italy, France, the United Kingdom - were actually sending police officers to Guantanamo to interview the detainees there, outside of any legal framework or any norm,'' Brody added. The European Parliament's main group, the conservative European People's Party, wants to change the report to say there is limited hard evidence to substantiate the abuse accusations. It also wants to add a paragraph saying the CIA has the right to land in the EU as long as it does not break the law. The assembly's second largest group, the Party of European Socialists, tabled an amendment to remove the threat of sanctions and to leave to EU states the decision to launch a joint investigation or not. At least 1,245 CIA flights would have flown into or over Europe in the four years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the report says. Washington acknowledges the secret transfer of suspects to third countries but denies torturing them or handing them to countries that did.

ITN Source | February 14, 2007

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