Reprinted from NewsMax.com
EU Report
Blasts U.S. Detainee Policy
Wednesday, Nov. 29,
2006
A European Parliament commission issued a draft report in
Brussels on Tuesday that vigorously condemned the United States for
apprehending terrorists on European soil and transporting them to
"secret prisons" around the world.
The report called for the closure of the U.S.-run interrogation
and detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "and for European
countries to accept the return of their citizens and residents who
are being held illegally by U.S. authorities."
Members of the European investigating commission have been
publicly critical of the United States, but never before in such
harsh terms.
Their draft report, released on Tuesday in Brussels, was a bald
condemnation of the U.S.-led war on terror and of the European
governments and officials who have assisted it.
It called on the European parliament to issue a resolution that
"condemns extraordinary rendition as an illegal and systematic
instrument used by the United States in the fight against terrorism,"
while chastising European countries for "the acceptance and
concealing of the practice."
In a throwback to the policies of the Clinton administration, the
European report insisted that "terrorism must be fought by legal
means," and insisted that the United States "rethink the relationship
between the need for security and the rights of individuals."
The Europeans also gave a nod to congressional Democrats, by
"[welcoming] the announcement by the incoming majority in the
U.S. Senate" that it intended to hold hearings on rendition and CIA
secret prisons.
The European Parliament Temporary Committee on the alleged use
of European countries by the CIA for the transportation and illegal
detention of prisoners was established in January, and has sent
delegations to Macedonia, the United States, Germany, Britain,
Romania, Poland and Portugal to investigate CIA activities.
In a hearing earlier this year, the commission released
detailed flight logs of hundreds of secret CIA flights, identifying
the airplanes used for renditions and the CIA proprietaries that
operated them.
These are considered some of the
Agency's most highly-valued secrets. Shell companies that own and
operate aircraft "cost us a fortune to set up," a former CIA
operations officer told NewsMax. "And now it is going to cost us a
fortune to replace them."
The report revealed that since October 2001, the CIA has
operated "at least 1,245 flights . . . into the European airspace,"
and chastised European governments for "relinquishing their control
over their airspace and airports by admitting flights operated by the
CIA."
The report called on all European countries that have not
already done so to "initiate independent investigations into all
stopovers made by civilian aircraft carried out by the CIA" since
2001, and called for a review of existing European anti-terrorism
legislation "to avoid any repetition" of the CIA extraordinary
renditions.
It revealed that 336 CIA aircraft were stopped in Germany, 170
in Britain, 147 in Ireland, 91 in Portugal, 68 in Spain, 64 in
Greece, and 57 in Cyprus.
After the United States, the two countries singled out for the
harshest treatment in the draft report — Poland and Romania —ironically
had the fewest CIA stopovers, with just 21 in Romania and 11 in
Poland.
The anti-American tone of the draft report was stunning, even
to close observers of the European investigation.
Members of the investigating committee, headed by Italian
parliamentarian Giovanni Claudio Fava, boasted that they had met
"confidentially" with former CIA officers, who provided them with
inside information.
"Not me," said former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, who met
with the committee in Washington this May. "I refused to talk to them
at all on these subjects," he told NewsMax on Tuesday. "I only talked
on public intel issues."
"My whole meeting with them was in the presence of the press
and on the record," he added.
Woolsey is not mentioned in the European report, although the report
heaps praise on reporters from the Washington Post and ABC News for
helping to break the story.
The Europeans also lauded Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International for their role in the initial investigations into
so-called "ghost detainees."
In addition to its harsh criticism of the Bush administration,
the report also went after Bush allies in Europe, including former
Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and British Prime Minister
Tony Blair.
It singled out several European Union
officials by name for stonewalling the investigation.
Top EU official Javier Solana was guilty of "omissions and
denials" in his declarations to the committee, the report said.
EU Counterterrorism coordinator Gijs de Vries was noteworthy
for "the lack of credibility of his statements" to the commission,
which suggested he be fired and his position be eliminated.
EUROPOL director Max-Peter Ratzel also incurred the
commission's ire for his refusal to testify, "especially since it
appears that liaison officers, notably from the U.S. intelligence
services, have been posted to his office."
Current and previous NATO secretaries general Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer and Lord Robertson took it on the chin for slighting the
commission.
Particularly galling to Fava and his fellow commissioners was NATO's
refusal to provide the classified minutes of the Oct. 4, 2001 NATO
decision to activate the mutual defense clause of the NATO treaty at
the request of the United States, thus triggering European assistance
in the war on terror.
Helping the European investigation was an organization known as
the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation,
Eurocontrol, which coordinates air traffic control standards and
airport security. Eurocontrol provided the detailed flight logs for
the clandestine CIA flights. The report thanked Eurocontrol for its
"excellent cooperation and the very useful information" it shared
with the commission.
Fava and his fellow commissioners
called on public prosecutors and judges throughout Europe to follow
the lead of the Italian court that has handed down an indictment
against CIA clandestine officer Robert Seldon Lady and 26 others for
allegedly kidnapping an Egyptian Islamist in Milan.
Nasr Osama Mustafa Hassan, alias Abu Omar, was abducted off the
street in Milan on Feb. 17, 2003. According to an eyewitness cited in
the indictment, "two men in Western clothing" checked his identity
papers, then "forced him to get into a white van and drove off
immediately at great speed."
They took Abu Omar to the U.S. military airbase in Aviano, and
then flew him to Egypt where he was jailed and interrogated.
The Italian court identified Robert Lady and the 26 others
through credit card receipts and hotel bills. "If nothing else, they
were guilty of incredibly poor tradecraft," two former CIA officers
who were aware of the case told NewsMax.
Robert Lady and the others have been charged with kidnapping, a
felony which could lead to stiff prison sentences if they are
convicted, as observers believe they will be.
The CIA refused to comment on the case, calling it "a legal
matter."
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