Posted on 03/01/2006 11:09:08 AM PST by lizol
Italy, Poland fail to settle issue of ‘secret prisons’
By Daniel Dombey in London
Published: March 1 2006 18:13 | Last updated: March 1 2006 18:13
Italy and Poland have failed to dispel suspicions that they have broken European law by colluding with the US over “secret prisons” and extra-legal abductions, the 46-nation Council of Europe said on Wednesday.
The human rights body said the two countries had failed to give clear answers to questions about their possible involvement in illegal activities by foreign intelligence agencies. Council of Europe member states are legally bound to respond to such inquiries.
“I would have expected both of them to use the opportunity to clear the air,” said Terry Davis, Council of Europe secretary-general.
The organisation also said that Europe had next to no safeguards to restrain foreign intelligence agents nor any way of monitoring that its airports and airspace were not used for illegal abductions.
Mr Davis said that only Hungary had any legal provisions to oversee foreign security services’ actions on its territory. “What’s the point of controlling your own security services if other people can do their dirty work unhindered?”
Mr Davis published his findings as Cherie Booth, a leading human rights lawyer and the wife of Tony Blair, UK prime minister, added her voice to the debate about torture, deploring the practice while arguing that in the “real world” courts might have to take into account evidence obtained by torture.
The Council of Europe began looking into the issue last year amid a blaze of publicity about the US practice of “extraordinary rendition”, as well as records of CIA flights in Europe and reports – denied by both countries – that Poland and Romania had hosted covert CIA jails.
Other focuses of attention have included the abduction of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen, from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the abduction of Abu Omar, an Egyptian citizen, from Italy.
The Italian government says it was not involved in Abu Omar’s case but so far it has declined to back Italian prosecutors’ calls for 22 CIA agents to be extradited from the US over the affair.
Mr Davis said Rome had failed to answer a specific question about whether government officials had been involved in the “unacknow-ledged deprivation of liberty of any individual”.
Speaking at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the British thinktank, Ms Booth said judicial scrutiny could act as a check on the use of torture.
“With the exception of terrorism, it is difficult to think of a practice that more egregiously impacts on the dignity of human beings,” she said. “Torture may be said to be the terrorism of the state.” But she also endorsed a ruling by the upper house of parliament which “enabled the evidence of torture to be examined on a case-by-case basis . . . the only way these matters can be resolved.”
Who gives a damn what the Council on Europe thinks?
not me. How we deal with terrorists should be NO ONE's business.
Nobody even in Europe.
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