Posted on 06/07/2006 11:09:19 PM PDT by MadIvan
Britain was named yesterday as one of 14 European nations that allegedly helped the Central Intelligence Agency abduct and secretly transport terrorist suspects to countries where they faced torture.
The accusations came in a report by a former Swiss prosecutor for the Council of Europe, which monitors human rights in 46 European nations.
Tony Blair denied the collusion allegations and said the report, by the Swiss senator Dick Marty, contained no fresh evidence.
Mr Blair told MPs during Prime Minister's Questions: "I have to say the Council of Europe report has absolutely nothing new in it."
In Washington, a spokesman for the State Department described the report as a disappointing "re-hash".
The report focused on the cases of 17 people who say they were unlawfully taken into detention by US authorities - some of whom have since been released.
Mr Marty said he found correlations in the stories of many of the detainees, who described being stripped by teams of balaclava-wearing men, blindfolded, placed in adult nappies, boilersuits and manacles, before being flown into detention.
The report said British intelligence and security services provided tip-offs, personal information and interrogators to a global "spider's web" created by the CIA after the September 11 attacks.
It said data provided by European air traffic control logs offered the strongest evidence yet - if not proof - that the CIA network included secret prisons in Poland and Romania, staging points where teams gathered for operations, and refuelling stops used by CIA aircraft, including Prestwick airport in Scotland.
The Foreign Office has said that since 1998, Britain agreed to two US requests involving so-called "renditions" - in which a suspect is secretly transported to face criminal proceedings in another country - and refused two others. But the Council of Europe report focused on the question of "extraordinary renditions".
This is when terrorist suspects are moved around the world without legal process, for interrogation in US-run facilities from Afghanistan to Cuba, or sent for harsh questioning, often in the Arab world.
Mr Marty said several countries let the CIA abduct their residents, while others allowed the agency to use their airspace. "European governments simply agreed not to want to see," he said.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Thank you- let's do it again sometime. :-D
Regards, Ivan
I hope those nappies were put on with the adhesive strips facing inward.
Couldn't a few traffic accidents or random disappearances without trace be used instead?
The newsies don't want to call it what it is- repatriation. We're returning the weasels to their home countries, after all.
I can actually hear the 60 million Brits yawning as they read this article.
"Mr Marty said he found correlations in the stories of many of the detainees, who described being stripped by teams of balaclava-wearing men, blindfolded, placed in adult nappies, boilersuits and manacles, before being flown into detention."
Bully for YOU, Great Britain!
BTW, I saw an interview with this Marty fellow.
He claimed that it was hard to get evidence of this.
Stay tuned...!
Were they actually tortured? If not, then the author ought to STFU
Thank you Britain and all European countries who helped out.
There's hope for Western Civilization yet.
Thanks Britain!
Well...lets say just on a 50 percent chance that they were whisked away. Could it be that they weren't exactly dragged, and instead...the CIA simply simply offered them a deal that could not be turned down? Lets face it...in the terrorist empire...your future isn't rosy...your finances are going up and down. You have no real life. Your wife and family don't really exist. So if a CIA guy came up and offered you a chance to move to Brazil, with the US funding you for $30k a year for the rest of your life...you'd probably take it and dump all the info that you hold. Marty simply doesn't want to believe that this could happen...he prefers the torture angle and the bad stuff. Money often works better than torture.
Thank you and your PM for any atrocities that may have been committed -- like underwear on the head, etc. -- but this article is garbage. If it was on the level, they wouldn't have used the year "1998" in the claim.
Everyone knows any intelligence used at that time was for finding jobs for young ladies in New York.
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