Europe Key Player in CIA Secret Prisons
30 June, 2006
By Noman Baig
After eight months of preliminary investigation, the Council of Europe's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights finally issued a report on the American run secret prisons in Eastern Europe. Dick Marty, Swedish senator and author of the report, found the secret prisons to be part of the 'global spider web' that the CIA has created under the program name 'rendition' during mid-1990s. According to the report, fourteen European countries acted "willingly and deliberately" in the US rendition program to transport prisoners abducted in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and most shockingly in Sweden, Italy, Bosnia, and Macedonia. The report also reaffirmed the earlier claims of the American news channel ABC that Poland and Romania provided necessary facilities for the inhuman CIA prisons. Not surprisingly, the US, the UK and other European countries named in the report bluntly denied the report as based on allegations rather than facts. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said the report "added absolutely nothing new whatever to the information we have."
The ignominious revelation of the CIA's secret prisons in eastern Europe did not bring surprise to people around the world. The CIA has been actively involved, not only in human rights abuses in different parts of the world, but also in civil liberties infringement in the U.S. The agency's recent eavesdropping on American phone lines recently generated tremendous criticism against the Bush administration. Marty's report exposes several European countries' involvement in the transport of prisoners and portrays this participation as a direct violation of EU human rights laws and values in general. However, it was not until this story was reported by the American media that the EU's credibility regarding human rights code was considered questionable. If the EU is so deeply and sincerely concerned with human rights violations, then why do these same countries permit the US military to use their soil as refueling points for American planes enroute to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq? The silence on this critical issue reveals that the inquiry into the secret CIA prisons was initiated merely because it was revealed by the Washington Post in November 2005. If the secret prison story had not been exposed by the American newspaper and ABC News, it is unlikely that there would have been an inquiry by the Council of Europe.
The second question that arises is why human rights abuses only matter when occurring on European soil. Why we don't hear similar European criticisms on US run prisons in other non-European countries such as Afghanistan, where human rights abuses of the same nature continue undisputed?
Ironically, the media's fervid diatribe towards the CIA's role in running secret prisons subsequently ignores the part played by the European governments who are partially, if not equally, responsible for American prison abuses in their countries. It is difficult to believe that European governments so grossly negligent that they were unaware of US activities in their airspace. The European callowness to illegal American prisons is a prime example of the former's contribution to human rights abuse. Further, it shows how much Western Europe is interested in promoting true human values indiscriminately. Most importantly, the investigation of US abuses should not be limited to Europe but it must be carried out in every country involved in the "War on Terror." Full inquiry in prisoner abuses in different parts of the world will further expose US imperial agenda.
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