FIRST OFFICIAL REPORT on the so-called "renditions" scandal.

Investigator links Europe's spy agencies to CIA flights

Jon Henley in Paris and Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian


CIA prisoners in Europe were apparently abducted and moved between countries illegally, possibly with the aid of national secret services who did not tell their governments, according to the first official report on the so-called "renditions" scandal. Dick Marty, a Swiss senator investigating allegations of secret CIA prisons for the Council of Europe, said that he did not think the US was still holding prisoners in Europe, but had probably moved them to north Africa last month.



Mr Marty said in a statement after a Paris meeting of the council that his information so far "reinforces the credibility of the allegations concerning the transfer and temporary detention of individuals, without any judicial involvement, in European countries". The council has set its 46 members a three-month deadline to reveal what they know about the transfers. Mr Marty said that if it was proved that European governments knew the renditions process, involving flying terrorist suspects to secret interrogation centres, was going on, they "would stand accused of having seriously breached their human rights obligations to the Council of Europe".


Human Rights Watch, a New York-based watchdog, claimed that Poland and Romania may have been sites for possible CIA prisons, but both countries have denied the allegations. Mr Marty has demanded air traffic log books, and satellite pictures of an airport in Poland and an air base in Romania.

The senator said he believed European secret services had collaborated over the flights well beyond exchanges of information. "I think it would have been difficult for these actions to have taken place without a degree of collaboration," he said. "But it is possible that secret services did not inform their governments."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,16518,1666925,00.html

and then factual information will leak out from the investigators...

"...with the aid of national secret services who did not tell their governments..."

So governments now work independent of their secret service divisions?

Fantastic.

ON EDIT: Tank you Guardian UK, thank you democratic Europe; real Americans are listening and watching. (Oh yeah, thank you kpete.)