US accused of using gangster tactics over terror suspects

US accused of using gangster tactics over terror suspects

· Washington 'outsourced torture', says senator
· Critics attack lack of evidence in report
Nicholas Watt in Strasbourg
Wednesday January 25, 2006

Guardian
Europe's human rights watchdog accused Washington yesterday of using "gangster tactics" by flying in terrorist suspects to countries where they would face torture, and criticised European countries who appear to have done nothing to intervene.

"If a country resorts to the tactics of gangsters I say no," Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, said at the Council of Europe's winter session in Strasbourg. "There are different elements that allow me to say that governments were aware of what was happening."

Mr Marty, who is investigating allegations of "extraordinary rendition", estimated that more than 100 people have been flown to prisons in third countries where they may have been tortured. "There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outsourcing of torture'," Mr Marty told the 46-nation council.

"Individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and transported to different destinations in Europe, to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered degrading treatment and torture. It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware."

Mr Marty highlighted two examples. One is the abduction by suspected US agents in 2003 of Abu Omar, an Egyptian citizen who had been granted political asylum in Italy. Another example is the arrest in Macedonia of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese origin who was reportedly flown to Kabul for interrogation.

"I am scandalised that a few kilometres from where I live people can be lifted by foreign governments. When someone goes on holiday in Macedonia they are lifted by foreign agents," said Mr Marty.

Mr Marty is frustrated with the US and some European governments for offering little cooperation as he seeks to unravel allegations, which surfaced in the Washington Post last year, that the CIA has been hiding and interrogating suspects at secret detention centres in eastern Europe or flying suspects to third countries where they are tortured.

While Mr Marty believes that "extraordinary renditions" do take place, he appeared to back away from allegations that the CIA set up secret detention centres in eastern Europe. "There is no formal, irrefutable evidence of the existence of secret detention centres in Romania, Poland or any other country," he said.

Britain revealed a little more yesterday. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, wrote to Tony Lloyd, a British member of the Council of Europe assembly, to say that between May 1997 and this month the US asked Britain to allow four people to be transported through the UK to face trial in the US. Britain had allowed two to pass through and blocked the other two. This took place in 1998 when Bill Clinton was president.

The lack of cooperation from governments prompted criticism that Mr Marty had relied too much on press cuttings in his interim report. Mike Hancock, a Lib Dem member of the assembly, said: "This report and further reports need to have more substance and more evidence of what has happened if the truth is going to come out. Many of the issues have been clouded by myth and a desire to kick America."

Denis MacShane, the former Europe minister who sits on the assembly, said: "The Marty report has more holes than a Swiss cheese. I have read it carefully and there is nothing new, no proof, no witness statement, no document that justifies the claims made."

But human rights groups welcomed the report. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: "It is time for our government to come straight - not about what it did not know but what it is going to do about such serious alleged violations of human rights and UK sovereignty."